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.

A technique for incorporating automatic transformations into processes such as the application of inference rules, subsumption, and demodulation provides a mechanism for improving search strategies for theorem proving problems arising from the field of program verification. The incorporation of automatic transformations into the inference process can alter the search space for a given problem, and is particularly useful for problems having broad rather than deep proofs. The technique can also be used to permit the generation of inferences that might otherwise be blocked and to build some commutativity or associativity into the unification process. Appropriate choice of transformations, and new literal clashing and unification algorithms for applying them, showed significant improvement on several real problems according to several distinct criteria.

This report describes the design of a facility capable of the simultaneous testing of up to 50 high-temperature (400 to 500 C) lithium alloy/iron sulfide cells; this facility is located in the Chemical Engineering Division of Argonne National Laboratory (ANL). The emphasis will be on the lifetime testing of cells fabricated by ANL and industrial contractors to acquire statistical data on the performance of cells of various designs. A computer-based data-acquisition system processes the cell performance data generated from the cells on test. The terminals and part of the data-acquisition equipment are housed in an air-conditioned enclosure adjacent to the testing facility; the computer is located remotely.

The application of the computer code GIRAFFE (General Isotope Release Analysis For Failed Elements) written in FORTRAN IV is described. GIRAFFE was designed to provide parameter estimates of the nonlinear discrete-measurement models that govern the transport and decay of delayed-neutron precursors in a liquid-metal fast breeder reactor (LMFBR). The code has been organized into a set of small, relatively independent and well-defined modules to facilitate modification and maintenance. The program logic, the numerical techniques, and the methods of solution used by the code are presented, and the functions of the MAIN program and of each subroutine are discussed.

A complete set of optical oscillator strengths and electron-impact cross sections for the argon atom is presented in tabular form. A large variety of experimental data and theoretical calculations was studied, and various checks based on theory (including the constraint of sum rules) were critically performed. Data were analyzed mainly by a semi-empirical method that stresses the close relation of photoabsorption with electron-atom collisions.

The computer code, TRANS4, models the melting and penetration of a solid barrier by a solid disc of fuel following a core disruptive accident. This computer code has been used to model fuel debris penetration of basalt, limestone concrete, basaltic concrete, and magnetite concrete. Sensitivity studies were performed to assess the importance of various properties on the rate of penetration. Comparisons were made with results from the GROWS II code.

The solution of the general nonlinear programming problem by means of a subroutine called VMCON is described. VMCON uses an algorithm that solves a sequence of positive-definite quadratic programming sub-problems. Each solution determines a direction in which a one-dimensional minimization is performed. In developing this code, changes in the original implementation were made to make the program easier to use and maintain and to incorporate some recently developed LINPACK subprograms. The current implementation contains extensive in-line documentation; an interface subroutine, VMCON1, with a simplified calling sequence; and print options to aid the user in interpreting results.

Various types of austenitic stainless steel (SS) were aged for up to 2500 h at a temperature of 600C to determine whether the resultant microstructural changes would affect the ultrasonic velocity and attenuation and thus the reliability of ultrasonic in-service inspections. Samples of Type 304 and 316 SS as well as 308, 308CRE, and 316 weld metal were examined. Velocity variations were less than 1%, and attenuation variations at frequencies below 10 MHz were not significant except in the anomalous case of one Type 316 SS weldmetal sample. That change may be due to unexpected microstructural changes associated with aging. The variation in the samples attributed to aging is therefore not expected to have a deleterious effect on ultrasonic in-service inspection of stainless steel reactor components.

MINPACK-1 is a package of Fortran subprograms for the numerical solution of systems of nonlinear equations and nonlinear least-squares problems. This report describes how to implement the package from the tape on which it is transmitted.

In 1978, a conceptual design of a 100 MW-h load-leveling battery system having Li alloy/FeS cells was developed as a result of a joint effort between ANL and Rockwell International. Most of this cost was contributed by the submodule structure and the charge equalization scheme, which was the same as that developed for electric-vehicle batteries.

This report is a compilation of Fast Breeder Reactor (FBR) resource documents prepared to provide the technical basis for the US contribution to the International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Evaluation. The eight separate parts deal with the alternative fast breeder reactor fuel cycles in terms of energy demand, resource base, technical potential and current status, safety, proliferation resistance, deployment, and nuclear safeguards. An Annex compares the cost of decommissioning light-water and fast breeder reactors. Separate abstracts are included for each of the parts.