The General Electric Company is designing and building a 180,000 kilowatt nuclear power plant for the Commonwealth Edison Company at a site near the confluence of the Kankakee and Des Plaines Rivers in Grundy County, Illinois, about 47 miles southwest of Chicago. The plant will be known as the Dresden Nuclear Power Station, and will employ a nuclear reactor of the dual-cycle boiling water type.

Activities in a program to develop techniques in the use of pulsed neutron sources to measure shutdown parameters related to large thermal power reactors are reported. In the course of this program, a new theory was suggested and an experimental apparatus was designed and built. Experiments were carried out to test the new model. This present report contains additional data and information extracted from the experiments at PG&E Humboldt Bay Power Reactor at Eureka, California. During the last days of 1963 a number of control rod and fuel bundle worth measurements were made in the ESADA Vallecitos Experimental Superheat Reactor (EVESR) using the (k[beta]/[script l] technique. A description of the experiments is given in the text of the report and some results are reported. A computer program was written to perform the data analysis of the pulsed neutron experiments and the code is discussed in the Appendix.

The design status of the Experimental Fast Ceramic Reactor (EFCR) is described for the period up to October 31, 1961. The primary purpose of the facility is to study the dynamic behavior of a fast ceramic reactor, including the experimental demonstration of the effectiveness of the Doppler coefficient in limiting the power excursion following a rapid insertion of reactivity.

The fabricability, elevated temperature strength, steam corrosion resistance, and hydrogen pickup of various binary, ternary, and quaternary alloys were studied experimentally.

Experimental results on the effect of periodic acceleration on a natural circulation, 1000 psia, two-phase flow loop are presented, and related to the topic of marine reactor design. The initial results of this work were given previously in GEAP 3397.

Task A: Modification and Preparation of Experimental Facility. Facility engineering and layout is about seventy-five percent complete. Task B: Design and Construction of Test Sections. The major dimensions and characteristics of the metal and glass test sections have been calculated. One feasibility test of the electrically conducting coating on samples of glass tubing has been completed. Task C: Design and Construction of Test Stand, Task E: Pressure and Temperature Instrumentation for Test Section and Task F: Power Supply for Test Section. Preliminary engineering has been initiated on these tasks. The planned approach has been defined in each case. For Task E the transducer specifications have been defined and quotations on and/or sample units of the transducers have been requested. Tasks C and F can proceed with detailing as soon as drafting on Task B is about 50 percent complete. This point is scheduled to be reached during the first part of July. Task D: Void Fraction Instrumentation. The requirements for the x-ray instrumentation have been considered in the course of Task B and the x-ray power supply is presently on hand. The detailed engineering effort on this task is not scheduled to begin before July.