A Biography of Dr. John M. Googin - Y-12 National Security ...

FYI
It was interesting to try to do the measurements
without a good hood and without the trouble of
using the handy gas mask. It should be noted that
there was no air cooling anywhere in the building,
but some ventilation through the window in the
summer time. It was recommended that the simple
titration be done in the process area that generated
the phosgene and had special ventilation, rather than
in the
Bulk Treatment laboratory that had little ventilation
and hood space.
Even though the phosgene was made by the ton,
few were hurt. Unfortunately, one maintenance man
was killed. It was one of these cases where work was
to be done on a pipe line that was “empty” as defined
by the safety work permit, but that was really
full of the carbon tetrachloride and phosgene solution
when it was opened.
There was some air cooling in 1944 in 9203. Y-12
was doing enriched-uranium purification with the
diethyl-ether solvent extraction of the nitrate
method, and since this ether boils at 35 C (95 F) and
the room temperature in the summer could get
higher than that, some cooling had to be supplied,
making that a good place to work or visit in summer
if you liked the smell of ethyl ether. Some of the first
of the highly enriched uranium for Los Alamos was
seen there in pure nitrate solution form in the early
summer of 1944.
All of the electrical fixtures in the ether area had
to be of the explosion- proof kind, including the
lights, so the area had a worrisome appearance.
There never was a serious fire, even though some
ether dripped from a pipe leak outside the protected
FYI 46
area onto a hot muffle furnace as it went from one
area to another. There were cases of small ether fires
where the flame from a Bunsen burner went from
one lab bench to another, following ether vapor
across a floor.
There was that weekly progress report to get
out, and there were the design data deadlines for the
9207 complex to reach. Sometimes this pressure
caused some really extended work times. The longest
remembered was a work period of forty-eight hours
in a row, to get data needed for decisions on the
details of the new peroxide precipitation and calcination
for the simplification of the flow diagram in the
Bulk Treatment process. One must admit that the last
few hours (after 36 hours) were not too productive.
There were extensive experiments on better
ways to do the chlorination of uranium trioxide to
uranium tetrachloride, by the Process Improvement
group and outside contractors. Some of the experiments
were done in the production area. The rotating-nickel-drum
batch reactor for vapor phase
chlorination (developed by the Harshaw Chemical
Co.) was adopted as the standard by the Production
Department to replace the liquid phase process, but
this was a batch process still. It was better in the
sense that it produced the tetrachloride instead of
the pentachloride that was the primary product of
the high-pressure liquid carbon tetrachloride process,
and the decomposition and sublimation steps
were avoided if the oxide feed was pure enough. A
continuous vapor-phase chlorination of a dancing bed
moved by vibrators was installed on an experimental
basis in 9202. It was interesting, noisy, but difficult to
operate.