Effective control and monitoring of the Purex aqueous discharges are an extremely important phase of plant operation. Protection of the surrounding environment from radioactive contamination has to be of paramount importance. All possible safety measures need to be utilized and systems in place which provide effective treatment, isolation and monitoring of the discharged streams. Continual evaluation of the discharge systems is necessary to insure effective treatment and control utilizing technically up-to-date methods that will insure minimal contamination release. Presented herein is an evaluation of Purex aqueous discharge treatment, control and monitoring capabilities and comparison with ERDA Manual Chapter 0511, 0513 and 0524 requirements. Where applicable, recommendations are submitted to accomplish those requirements.

A glove-box facility was designed to convert plutonium skull metal or unburned oxide to an oxide acceptable for plutonium recovery and purification. A discussion of the operation, safety aspects, and electrical schematics are included.

Several experimental routes can be used to develop a better understanding of the polymeric constitution (polyanionic and/or polyhedral distribution) of borate, germanate, and silicate glasses. Spectral, chemical, physical-chemical, and mechanical property information can be determined directly for the glass compositions of interest. Generally, only physical-chemical information is readily accessible for the corresponding high temperature liquids. It will be shown that information on each state of matter has its own particular merits. Most of the evidence thus far published suggests an excellent agreement between polyhedral distributions in an oxide glass and its corresponding high temperature liquid state. There is no well known oxide glass forming system for which such a state of affairs does not exist. In spite of this, occasional efforts are put forth which ignore some of what is known for oxide liquids, glasses, and crystals. Such attempts therefore invariably imply, if only indirectly, that significant changes occur in the polyhedral distributions close to the glass transition temperature region. Specific examples to be discussed will include efforts that avoid well known coordination change equilibria such as BO/sub 3/ reversible BO/sub 4/ and GeO/sub 4/ reversible GeO/sub 6/.