-19a substantially higher g/T level than the present standard production;
and the aéceptence of this level will make it possible to produce the
high quality material in addition without too much trouble. It will not
be necessary to undettake newprocess plant. constructioti beyond that now
planned,
The requirement for high quality material will not be met in.
1955,.and probablynot in 1956, but will be in 1957.
|
‘There was some consideration of whether still higher quality
plutonium would be needed, as suggested in Dr. Bradbury's letter.
Dr,
Mark summarized the situation by saying that material of better than
200 g/T quality was not needed for present designs, but that its lack
would place a limitation on future design possibilities,
|
U-233
Dr. Pittman reviewed the U~233 situation,
According to a recent -
study, the cost of U-233 would be comparable to that of 20 n/g-sec
plutonium.
It was planned to commence some. production by loading an
enriched Savannah River reactor with thorium next year.
There is some
indication that the supply of thorium metalwill be a bottleneck. For
a separation plant; a Savannah River Purex plant will probably be converted
to the Thorex process,
|
|
Upgrading plutonium by isotope separation did not appear economically
Piutonium advantageous, under any conditdons, in comparison to U~233.
Isotope
Separa-
tion
(Dr. Pittman
referred the Committee to an Operations Analysis report by Mr. Herron,
which compared low g/T, isotope separation, and U-233.
report was not available during the meeting.)
However, the
|
The lithiun-6 production plans had not been altered, and the plan to
Li-6
construct a second plant was going along.
LOH to LAD might be a bottleneck,
The capacity for converting
|