%MurNBholding102451; ]> Memorandum from Raymond Murray to Clifford K. Beck Machine readable transcription Murray, Raymond Creation of machine-readable version: Russell S. Koonts Creation of digital images: Russell S. Koonts Conversion to TEI.2-conformant markup: Russell S. Koonts ca. 9 kilobytes NCSU Libraries Raleigh, NC Modern English, MurNBholding102451

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 24 October, 2000

Nuclear Reactor Digitization Project

Raymond L. Murray Reactor Project Notebook

 Illustrations have been included from the print version. Scanned by Russell Koonts with Photoshop 5.0 software. Memorandum from Raymond Murray to Clifford K. Beck Raymond Murray

1 p. Manuscript copy consulted UA 105.16

Prepared for the North Carolina State University Science and Technology Electronic Text Center

The lineation of the manuscript has been maintained and all end-of-line hyphens have been preserved.

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Library of Congress Subject Headings October 24, 1951 English LCSH manuscript 24-bit color: 400 dpi Memorandum from Raymond Murray to Clifford K. Beck Typescript 1 p. October 24, 1951 MurNBholding102451

NCSC-36(?)Oct 24, 1951 TO: Clifford K. Beck CC: Reactor Committee SPECIAL HOLDING SYSTEM FOR GASES

The holding tank system proposed by Mr. Paulson has been studied in terms of the number and sizes of tanks needed to achieve the desired attenuation of fission gas activity.

The method is described by the diagram below:

The pressure in the Pitot tube at the stack is approximately 7" of water, (assuming a 25,000 ft3/min blower and a 10' diameter stack) which should provide a positive- transfer of gas.

An attenuative of activity of the principal hazardous isotope, Xe133 of a factor of 25, to bring its concentration in the stack gas down to 10-6 μc/cm3 of air, can be achieved with reasonably-sized tanks. A discharge rate of 100 cm3/min, principally residual H2 and O2 was assumed to arrive at these figures: Number of tanksDimension (or cubical tank) 18.2' 24.6' 33.5' 52.7' 102.1'

The only difficulty with the scheme is that the concentration of H2 and O2 builds up in the tanks, so that at equilibrium, it will be pure. The "half life" for the build up is given by tH = 0.693/v/V where v is the discharge rate (1.33 cm3/sec) and V is the individual tank volume (for the case of 3 tanks, 1.26 x 106 cm3). A typical half life (for the above figures) is l8 hours.

A possible solution is to install a valve after the concentrator that bleeds in enough air to increase the half life to a safe value, and to operate alternate systems. This requires that the storage volume be increased further, however, both by number and size of tanks.

Suggestions are requested from other members of the Committee.

Raymond Murray