Evaluation of melt-slagging techniques as a decontamination and consolidation step for metals contaminated with oxides of plutonium and americium.

This report is a record of experimentation conducted intermittently over a period of two years and directed toward preventing deposition of transport corrosion products on fuel elements and other critical components in high-temperature, circulating water nuclear reactor. It includes the postulated mechanism for deposition, a description of experimental equipment, experimental data, results obtained from the experiments, and recommendations for future study.

Fluid damping plays an important role for structures submerged in fluid, subjected to flow, or conveying fluid. This design guide presents a summary of calculational procedures and design data for fluid damping for circular cylinders vibrating in quiescent fluid, crossflow, and parallel flow.

Development of an improved semi-mechanistic-based set of correlation parameters for nucleation-dominant flow-boiling heat transfer in small channels is described.

"Work has been done on the adaptation of an electrical probe, developed by Neal for the measurement of local void fractions in mercury-nitrogen flow, to air-water flow. The adaptation is more difficult because of wetting of the probe by water. Various probe shapes and filming agents were employed without great success" (p. 1).

This report constitutes a formulation of a new concept for improving thermal-system performance by utilizing the combined mechanisms of enhanced heat transfer, transport, and thermal energy storage associated with a phase-change slurry as the working fluid. In addition, pertinent literature is surveyed and a quantitative scoping assessment of enhancement potential confirms concept merit. It has been determined that additional research and development is required in order to adequately understand the enhancement mechanisms to the degree that enhanced performance thermal systems using slurries can be designed. The concepts presented are identified as being new, rewarding research activities.

This report summarizes research during 1981 in the Division of Biological and Medical Research, Argonne National Laboratory. Studies in Low Level Radiation include comparison of lifetime effects in mice of low level neutron and gamma irradiation, delineation of the responses of dogs to continuous low level gamma irradiation, elucidation of mechanisms of radiation damage and repair in mammalian cells, and study of the genetic effects of high LET radiations.

Report that "summarizes the electrical design of the Experimental Breeder Reactor II Facility (EBR-II). It attempts to gather together and present in reasonable detail the essential features and workings of the completed design, and to present a concise overall view of the system" (p. 11).

This report summarizes the work completed on a project concerned with engineering models in dynamic plasticity. The concept of the endochronic theory of viscoplasticity and its subsequent improvement are discussed briefly. Applications and extensions of the theory to various dynamic problems are presented. In particular, the strain-rate effect in the improved endochronic theory and its application to wave propagation problems are discussed. Comparing the numerical results with other calculations and experimental data, it appears that endochronic theory provides a promising representation of realistic material behavior. At the same time endochronic theory is often numerically more efficient than other formulations.

Report of Argonne Environmental Research Division activities, including atmospheric physics, environmental effects research, organic geochemistry and environmental instrumentation, and fundamental molecular physics and chemistry.

Two ergodic theorems are presented for means of nonlinear contraction semigroups in a Hilbert space. These means are generated by a class of averaging kernels which includes the usual Abel and Cesaro-(C,cap alpha) kernels.

Given a mapping with a sparse Jacobian matrix, the problem of minimizing the number of function evaluations needed to estimate the Jacobian matrix by differences is investigated. This problem can be attacked as a graph coloring problem and this approach leads to very efficient algorithms. The behavior of these algorithms is studied and, in particular, it is proved that two of the algorithms are optimal for band graphs. Numerical evidence is presented which indicates that these two algorithms are nearly optimal on practical problems.

This report provides a preliminary assessment of some magnetic heat pump (MHP)/refrigeration concepts for cryogen liquefaction and other industrial applications. The study was performed by Astronautics Corporation of America for Argonne National Laboratory under the sponsorship of the U.S. Department of Energy.

During disassembly and subsequent visual examinations of X159 (a Mark A-19A type of subassembly containing mixed-oxide fuel), 11 of 19 shroud tubes were found fully or partially severed. Several of the capsules within their shroud tubes were distinctly kinked at axial locations near those at which the shroud tubes were severed. The examination also disclosed that the shroud-tube fractures occurred during reactor operations.

A tube array supported by baffle plates in crossflow may be subjected to fluid-elastic instability in the tube-support-plate-inactive mode. An experimental study is presented to characterize the tube motion. Three series of tests were performed to measure tube displacements as a function of flow velocity for different clearances. The motion was examined by root-mean-square values of tube displacements, power spectral densities, phase planes, Poincare maps, and Lyapunov exponents. The experimental data agree reasonably well with the analytical model, based on the unsteady flow theory.

Cold-trap regeneration may be very important in future LMFBRs because of the expected high hydrogen source from the steam generators. This hydrogen precipitates as NaH in the cold trap and may fill the trap within one year of operation. Several methods of cold-trap regeneration were considered, but the simplest and least expensive appears to be decomposition of NaH under vacuum at elevated temperatures. Experiments were done to assess the feasibility of this method for cold-trap regeneration. Small-scale simulated cold traps (SCT) were loaded with NaH and NaH plus Na2O, and were heated both under vacuum and under a sweep gas at 100 kPa. The evolved hydrogen was converted to water by a CuO bed and collected in a weighing tube.

The general program established at Argonne National Laboratory in connection with the Fast Power Breeder Reactor (PBR) includes performance of exponential experiments on assemblies having compositions which may exist in the reactor core. This report deals with that phase of the program known as the Fast Exponential Experiment which may be described very briefly as follows. An assembly of fissile (U-235) and fertile material (too small to be self-critical) intermixed with poisons (such as are encountered in the mechanical structure and coolant system of a self-sustaining reactor) is fed with neutrons from an auxiliary source. By measurements of the neutron flux within the assembly, important parameters can be calculated which are necessary to the proport design of an actual critical reactor of the same composition.

A three-dimensional finite-element elastic analysis is carried out for a thick-wall tube (as sued in typical LMFBR steam generators) that contains a surface flaw in the form of a paraboloid of revolution. Effects of the depth and aspect ratio of the flaw on the stress distribution and stress concentration in the tube are explored.

This report summarizes the flow-induced vibration of circular cylinders in quiescent fluid, axial flow, and crossflow, and applications of the analytical methods and experimental data in design evaluation of various system components consisting of circular cylinders.

Fluid excitation forces are measured in a water loop for two circular cylinders arranged in tandem and normal to flow. The Strouhal number and fluctuating drag and lift coefficients for both cylinders are presented for various spacings and incoming flow conditions. Results show the effects of Reynolds number, pitch ratio, and upstream turbulence on the fluid excitation forces.

A mathematical model is presented for fluidelastic instabilities in tube bundles exposed to nonuniform crossflow to develop an equivalent flow velocity. The model incorporates all motion-dependent fluid forces based on the unsteady flow theory. Published fluid-force coefficients are compiled and examined; all fluid-force coefficients are approximately independent of the reduced flow velocity when it is large but are strongly dependent on reduced flow velocity when it is lower. The unsteady flow model is used to show that the mode-weighted averaging method is valid for large reduced flow velocity, but that it is incorrect at lower reduced flow velocity. In the lower reduced flow velocity range, an iterative procedure is needed to establish the critical flow velocity. The results from the unsteady flow model are compared with those of other mathematical models. A general procedure is recommended to predict the equivalent flow velocity under different situations.

Report describing the steam by-pass system of the Economic Simplified Boiling Water (EBWR) Reactor. The control system and errors are described.

Quarterly report of the Argonne National Laboratory Chemical Engineering Division regarding activities related to properties and handling of radioactive materials, operation of nuclear reactors, and other relevant research.

The behavior of FTR-type, mixed-oxide, pre-irradiated, ''intermediate-power-structure'' fuel during a simulation of an FTR loss-of-flow accident was studied in the Mark-IIA integral TREAT loop. Analysis of the data reported here leads to a postulated scenario (sequence and timing) of events in the test. This scenario is presented, together with the calculated timing of events obtained by use of the SAS code.