Plutonium Processing at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory.

Abstract

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Coordinated safeguards for materials management in a nitrate-to-oxide conversion facility

“…Production experience in denitrating to UO 3 indicates that particle size could be affected by temperature, thermal shocking, sulfate content, and jet 19 grinding.…”

“…In another procedure, also developed at Oak Ridge, the sol is prepared by neutralizing NH 4 OH. 27 A third uses long chain HNO 3 with procedure aliphatic amines as ion-exchange extrac-9ft tors for HNO 3 . In all three methods, process parameters must be controlled to reduce the NOT/Pu ratio to near-unity.…”

“…The temperature for complete dehydration has been reported as 14O°C 34 to 350°C. 36 Temperatures as low as 270°C 34 and as high as 800°C 3 have been reported to be required for quantitative conversion to is important if weight is to be used for accountability at the product end of the process. 4.…”

“…The processmonitoring system, using plant instrumentation wherever possible, collects timely information of the type intended to detect a theft in progress from a limited set of on-line measurement equipment, plant-grade instrumentation, and other simple, reliable, process-monitoring devices. 6. Reliability.…”

“…A dynamic material balance is drawn after a boat is filled (% every 1.35 h). The material balance equation after the nth batch of material has been transferred is MB1 = C (V 1 -V ) -WB + HU n -HU n n n-1 n n n-1 n (C-l) " FC n FV n " 6 where Tl is the nth net material transfer in this unit n process, given by T1 n = C n<Vl -V " WB n " FC n FV n " 6 PF n PFC n PFV n ' 2. Material Balance Variance.…”