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1. CIRCULATING-FUEL
A few relatively minor changes in
the design of some phases of the
Aircraft Reactor kxperiment have been
made in the past quarter. These
changes involved the off-gas system
and the fuel disposal system, pri-
marily, and are discussed below.
There have been no changes in the
general design, and detailing of con-
struction and installation designs
has been largely completed. Installa-
tion of equipment in the building has
proceeded at an accelerated rate
throughout the quarter but has not
yet reached the expected peak rate.
Components from outside vendors, as
well as those fabricated in OMNL
shops, are being received in increas-
ing quantity; but some of the major
items, notably, the heat exchangers,
have not yet been received. It is
expected that all components w i l l be
on hand by the end of the year.
Component testing is proceeding in
the experimental engineering labora-
tories (sec. 2) , but the final component
testing is to be done in the ARE
Building. It is now planned to by-
pass the reactor so that a thorough
system test can be made before the
nondrainable reactor is tied into the
circuit. This procedure w i l l make
possible a complete shake-down run
without the possibility of incorporat-
ing a nondrainable component in the
system. The design change necessitated
by this alteration in operational
procedure isminor and will be effected
in the field. Considerable effort
during the quarter went into the
preparation of the “Hazards I’\eport, ”(’)
which, in addition to serving the
.--... ... .-....... .-............ ............
(”J. 8. Buck and W. B. Cottrell, Aircraft
Reactor Erper irent Haxards Summary Report,
ORNL-1407 (Nov. 24, 1952).
PERIOD ENDING DECEMBER
AIRCRAFT REACTOR EXPERIM ENT
J. H. Buck
Research Director’s Division
E. S. Bettis
A?P Division
10, 1952
purpose implied in the name, provided
the first draft of an operations manual
for t he e xp e r i men t .
It is practically impossible to
predict a date for satisfactory opera-
tion of the ARE. There are no means
available for predetermination of the
time required to correct difficulties.
It is not so difficult to attempt to
predict a date for the completion of
the installation of equipment, and
therefore a date for beginning the
system test in the building. At
present it is expected that the system
w i l l be ready for initial testing
near the first of June 1953. No
uranium w i l l be added to the system
until all reasonable checks have been
made to ensure the integrity of the
entire assembly.
FLUID CIRCUIT
G. A. Cri sty, Engineering Dep artment
The previous report ( 2, discussed
design changes necessitated by the
higher fuel viscosities. In brief,
the higher viscosities reduced the
Reynold’s number of the heat exchanger
tuhe side and changed the heat transfer
coefficient to such an extent that the
c a1 c u l ated minimum fi 1 rn temperatures
were in the vicinity of the freezing
point. Two corrective measures were
discussed; redesigning the heat ex-
changers and increasing the flow rate
through the entire circuit. The first
change has been accomplished. The
need for the increased flow rate has
been obviated by an accurate measure-
ment of the fuel thermal conductivity;
the new value of k i s 1.5 Btu/hr*ft’OF,
whereas 0.5 had been used in earlier
(2)G. A. Cristy, ANP Quar. Prag. Rep. Sept. 10,
1959, OWL-1375, p. 64
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