This project will provide a waste water treatment system to efficiently strip tritium from certain Mound generated waste water streams. After stripping the tritium from the water stream, the tritium will be further purified into a fully reusable form. The by-product streams, both liquid and gaseous, will be within applicable standards and can be released directly to the environment. The major components of the system consist of the following: an organic cleanup unit for the incoming waste stream, to be located inside a new glovebox in SW 149B; catalytic exchange columns and electrolysis cells, and a hydrogen recombiner to be located inside new gloveboxes in T-57; hydride storage beds and a cryogenic distillation unit to be located inside new gloveboxes in T-16; control instrumentation, and tie-in lines to utilities as required. All major components of this system have been tested and successfully operated in a small pilot plant.

A simple and potentially inexpensive method for removal of H/sub 2/S from noncondensible gases evolved in geothermal flash processes has been successfully tested on a small scale in the field. The method consists of scrubbing the noncondensible gases of H{sub 2}S with brine effluents which contain relatively high concentrations of Pb, Zn, and Fe such as those of the Salton Sea and Brawley Geothermal Fields in the Imperial Valley, California. For plant applications, noncondensibles including H{sub 2}S would be ejected from a surface steam condenser (necessary to minimize the volume of liquid in contact with H/sub 2/) and scrubbed with effluent brine just prior to preinjection clarification. The metal sulfide precipitates are removed in the clarification step and the noncondensibles, less H{sub 2}S, are vented as usual.

The oxygen potential of hypostoichiometric plutonia at temperatures from 1000 to 1200/sup 0/C has been measured as a function of the oxygen-to-plutonium ratio by a thermogravimetric procedure. These data have been used to calculate activity coefficients for plutonia dissolved in urania and in thoria.

Structural analyses are reported of upgraded coal-liquids derived from catalytic hydroprocessing of a 30 to 70 blend SRC I with SRC II in a trickle bed reactor under different process conditions. The results indicate that along with the decrease in toluene insolubles, heteroatom (O,N,S) content, aromatic content and corresponding increase in aliphatic content, the hydrogen-bonded structure and phenolic OH content of the coal-liquid drastically decrease with increase in contact time and temperature. The specific gravity, aromaticity, and atomic C/H ratio of the upgraded liquids decrease linearly with the conversion of pentane-insolubles (TI + A) into pentane-soluble oil (HO). Increase in temperature from 672/sup 0/K to 694/sup 0/K, under present hydroprocessing conditions, accelerates thermal hydrocracking and increases the conversion of pentane-insolubles, with a marked decrease in specific gravity, viscosity, heteroatom content, and atomic C/H ratio of the upgraded liquid. Hydroprocessing conditions greatly influence the properties of asphaltene fractions.

The primary objective of this program is to develop data and techniques for determining the dynamic impact response of radioactive-material shipping-container systems for environmental control and safety overview and assessment. One phase of this program is the dynamic testing of 1/8-, 1/4-, and 1/2-scale models of uranium-shielded truck casks. These linearly scaled models are fabricated from the same materials typically used in full-size prototype casks. In order to analytically evaluate the results of dynamic tests, it is necessary to know the mechanical properties of the materials of construction. Since the properties of cast uranium--molybdenum alloys vary significantly with casting and heat-treating techniques, it is necessary to fully characterize the mechanical properties of the uranium used in the model tests. This report presents the results of these studies. The uranium alloy exhibited a tensile strength equal to or greater than that reported by others. As indicated by the percentage of elongation and reduction in area, the ductility was lower. Comparative data for the other mechanical properties measured were not found in the literature.

None