Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Waggoner Carr, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Construction of senate Bill 318, Acts of the 58th Legislature, Regular Session, relating to the removal of the ex officio membership of the Attorney General on various State boards and commissions.

Irradiation of process tubes containing appropriate parent materials has been proposed by Manufacturing as a method for obtaining new products from the Hanford Reactors. The process tubes would be removed at appropriate intervals and shipped to separations plants for recovery of the products. The tube residence in the reactor could be determined by the optimum irradiation period for isotope production rather than by the period required to corrode tubes of current design to the minimum permissible wall thickness at replacement. This paper, presents an analysis to determine the benefits from red reducing the initial wall thickness of the process tubes below the current 65 mils when the desired residence for isotope production is shorter than the residence based on maximum permissible internal corrosion for tubes of current design.

Irradiation of Np-237 in Hanford reactors and recovery of the Pu-238 product in a close-coupled separations plant is currently of interest. Such a concept has the potential of increasing in Pu-238 production rates. The results of initial calculations on the subject are presented herein to aid further study and evaluation. Much of the information is presented in terms of the aqueous target system proposed in earlier work (i.e., irradiation and processing of an aqueous neptunium solution). However, most of the information can be converted for evaluation of a solid target system.

In-pile loop experiments L-2-15 and L-4-16 were designed to test the radiation corrosion of Zircaloy-2 and other possible reactor construction materials in UO/sub 2/SO/sub 4/ solutions. The solutions employed were 0.17 m UO/ sub 2/SO/sub 4/, 0.015 m CuSO/sub 4/, and 0.03 m H/sub 2/SO/sub 4/ in H/sub 2/O for experiment L-2-15, and 0.17 m UO/sub 2/SO/sub 4/, 0.015 m CuSO/sub 4/, and 0.025 m H/sub 2/SO/sub 4/ in H/sub 2/O for experiment L-4-16. The mainstream temperature in the experiments ranged from 278 to 280 deg C. Construction material for the loops was type 347 stainless steel. Specimens of types 347 and 309SCb stainless steels titanium-55A and -110AT, platinum, Zircaloy-2, crystalbar zirconium, and a variety of other zirconium alloys were tested. The power density at core specimens ranged from 19.8 to 4.6 w/ml in L-2-15 and from 5.7 to 1.3 w/ml in L-4-16. For loop L-2-15, the total time of hightemperature operation with UO/sub 2/SO/sub 4/ was 792 hr, during in-pile exposure, and the reactor energy was 1632 Mwh; for loop L-4-16, 1032 hr and 2325 Mwh. During both experiments most of the reactor energy was accumulated at 3-Mw power level. In general, stainless steel corrosion results from these experiments …

Vapor volume fraction (void fraction) experiments using a gamma attenuation technique were planned. The experimental program required designing a test section and a steam generator. While the design of the test section was straightforward, the steam generator required considerably more attention because of the large flow and power requirements. Both designs were completed. All components of the gamma attenuation detection system were assembled and checked to be sure they were in proper operating condition. An IBM-1620 computer program was written to reduce the count rate data, taken during the experiments, to void fractions. A calibration of the void detection system was accomplished by scanning a Lucite-air mock-up of a water-steam flow pattern. The measured void fraction distribution was in good agreement with the known void distribution of the Lucite-air geometry. (auth)

Measurements were made of the total energy deposited at various points within a 42-cm-dia spherical water-filled lucite phantom by the secondary particles resulting from 160-Mev proton reactions with various targets. Target materials were water, aluminum, carbon, copper, and bismuth. Detectors were small lucite-walled ionization chambers filled with 97% A--3% CO/sub 2/ or ethylene gas. Data were taken both with the lucite phantom on the beam axis and with the phantom offset approximately 54 deg -43' from the beam axis. The proton beam energy determined from a part of these results, 160-162 Mev, is in good agreement with published values. The energy deposited by secondary particles was found to increase with Z, as expected. The depth-dose curves obtained have a steeply negative slope over the region near the surface of the phantom and a more gentle slope at greater depths. The magnitude of the dose in the region of the initial slope decreases with increasing target thickness. The dose in this region is presumably due to secondary protons. The magnitude of the dose at greater depths increases with increasing target thickness. At the greater depths the slope of the depth-dose curves, presumabiy controlled by secondary neutron interactions, is similar to that …

Installation of the test equipment and checkout of the steam-water test facility's controls for the first series of tests was completed with favorable results. Tests to determine the relation between steam void fraction and superficial steam velocity are complete through the pressure range of 600 to 2,000 psig. A correlation equation which relates steam void fraction to basic system parameters ia reported. The liquid level detector is in operation, and preliminary tests were performed. Detector performance is as predicted. Void fraction measurements in the downcomer region of the reactor mock-up were completed. Results show that by using a reduced area riser, carryunder in a natural separation system can be greatly reduced. The prediction equation which relates riser geometric parameters and fluid properties to downcomer voids is refined to include results of the large diameter tests. The resulting equation more accurately describes large diameter risers. Development and testing of the 8- and 10-inch diameter centrifugal downflow separators were completed. The best separator tested to date has a flow capacity of 2800 gpm with 0.75% carryunder. Development of an analytical approach to design of this type of separator for a given set of pressure and flow conditions is in progress. (auth)

A brief review of boiling for ordinary fluids with emphasis on the wall superheat required for bubble initation from different surfaces at varying pressures is presented. Calculations based on an equation valid for normal fluids indicate that superheats from two to eight times that for water are required to initiate a vapor bubble in some of the alkali metals. The high superheat and the high thermal conductivity peculiar to liquid metals are combined to explain the unstable liquid-metal boiling phenomenon in natural- and forced-circulation loops. Forced-convection boiling-potassium heat-transfer coefficients correlated by the Locknart-Martinelli two-phase flow parameter are in reasonable agreement with the forced-convection boiling-water data of Dengler and Addoms. Some recomraendations on bubble initiation sites and future work with liquid metals are also included. (auth)

A scavenging-precipitation ion-exchange process using phenolic resins was developed to decontaminate lowradioactivity-level process water waste prior to discharge to the environment. In laboratory and small engineeringscale tests, greater than 99.9% of the cesium and strontium, the principal biological hazards were removed from ORNL low-level waste, and the total activity level was lowered to less than the maximum permissible concentration recommended for populations in the neighborhood of atomic energy installations. The water was treated by a scavenging-precipitation with sodium hydroxide, pH 11.7, and ferrous sulfate, copperas-5 ppm Fe, to remove suspended solids and soluble hardness, clarified, and then passed through a carboxylic-phenolic ion-exchange resin to sorb the remaining radionuclides. After passage of 1,500 to 2,000 resin-bed volumes, the resin was eluted with 10 volumes of 0.5 M HNO/sub 3/. Sodium carbonate can be added in the precipitation step to aid the quantitative precipitation of calcium for wastes that contain small amounts of phosphates, or alternatively, an extra ion-exchange column of carboxylic resin can be used to remove calcium and thus conserve the capacity of the phenolic resin for cesium and strontium. Three kinds of studies were made: batch laboratory-scale studies, continuous nonradioactive runs at 15 liters/hr, and runs with radioactive waste …

Poison demand curves were computed for a boiling water reactor with H/ sub 2/O to UO/sub 2/ ratios of 2.1 and 3.0, a uranium235 enrichment of 3.3 wt%, and fuel depletions in the range of 10,000 to 25,000 Mwd/t. These curves indicate poison lumps in the form of cylinders to be desirable. For these same reactors, the excess reactivity was computed for the cold clean, hot clean non- voided, and hot full-power equilibrium conditions. The excess reactivity was computed with and without a black burnable poison sized for the full power equilibrium condition. The moderator temperature defect and reactor operating power defect are increased substantially if computed including explicitiy the effect of a black poison. Model development was completed for depleting isolated cylinders. Initial self-shielding factors were computed as a function of cylinder radius for ten neutron temperatures. Depletion calculations were performed for four values of cylinder diameter and neutron temperature. Gadolinia cylinders in alumina rods were formed and sintered at temperatures up to 2850 deg F. A reaction between Al/sub 2/O/sub 3/ and Gd/sub 2/O/sub 3/ begins at 2650 deg F. Investigations were begun of reaction between UO/sub 2/ and Gd/sub 2/O/sub 3/. Development was completed on methods to …

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Technical report. From Abstract : "A system has been developed to program a digital computer in much the same manner as an analog computer is programmed. Properties of a general purpose analog computer and a digital differential analyzer are combined to yield a program which employs, as input, standard data cards prepared from a diagram analogous to an analog computer diagram. The capacity of the system is much greater than that of most analog computers, making it applicable to large simulation problems. No scaling is required. The system is compatible with the Fortran symbolic language and may be used as part of a larger digital computer program. It may be applied to the more general types of boundary value problems arising in process simulation in addition to the initial value problems ordinarily solved on analog computers. It is particularly well adapted to non-linear problems and to control problems involving large transport delays. The program operates in basic machine language and, when used by itself, requires no compilation time."