reviewed by the lab project officer to make sure that it looks reasonable,
there are no screw-ups in it.

When the data has been certified,

then a

letter is written to DRI, and they receive the results of the plutonium.
Bernie, let me have the next one.

We'll go over these boxes one by one

(32). This is breaking down the chemistry box.

As soon as the sample comes

in, it goes directly to chemistry and this is roughly what happens to it in
chemistry.
(Figure 33).

The initial box is the leach.

What happens is that you

dissolve most of the metals in the soil with acid.

It comes off in the

10

acid leach.

11

essentially, do the same thing.

12

of the other draughts that came out with the acid.

13

get to the bottom of the third box, you have only plutonium.

14

box is where you electroplated, and I'l] show you our electroplating appa-

15

ratus.

16

platinum disk.

17

troscopy on the plutonium,

18

it's much cheaper, but that interferes with the spectroscopy, so we do it

i9

on platinum and, of course, the platinum can be reused.

20

lost.

21

You discard the rest of the soil.

The second two boxes,

They separate out the plutonium from all
By the time that you
The bottom

This is where the plutonium is put on as a thin film on top of the
Now, platinum is used because you want to do mass specand we normally use stainless steel,

I have some slides here.

because

It's not really

This is the initial step in the leach.

We

22

have the soil in the beaker and the chemist is pouring the acid in it.

It

23

gives you an idea of how much soil we start to analyze and this is normally

24

done on a hot plate and it is done overnight.

25

soil once the acid goes in there.

26

this for quite a while.

27

You put the acid in and you put it on a hot plate and heat it and leave it

28

overnight, pour off the liquid which contains most of the plutonium and for

This is what happens to the

It starts foaming and working.

The way this is done,

162

It does

it's done in four steps.

Select target paragraph3