material was combined with more newly purified
tion of the air lines was suspected, but an im
plutonium, and the 8-gram sample, in the form of
tigation by CM-12 has failed to show appreciab:
the hydroxide, was placed in a centrifuge tube.
contamination.
While being centrifuged, the tube broke, **
Better respirators must be obtained quickly.
The air pressure is being incre
spilling the sample into the centrifuge cup and
Improvements in the handling of product are be
into the centrifuge itself.
made, but it will be some time before the haza
The plutonium was
recovered once again by repeatedly washing the in-
be appreciably reduced except by the use of be
side of the centrifuge with a dilute acid soiu-
protective devices.
tion ene e**
of improvements such as installation of a new
Surprisingly, very little pluto-
nium was lost in these two accidents.
CM-1 has helped with a nu
studies on improving the ventilation, installa
In addition to these spectacular accidents,
there were also occasional spills of large volumes
of foot-pedal sinks, etc.
The situation is st
critical, however."
(up to 50 liters) of dilute plutonium solution (5
to 10 mg) onto the floor.
trated solutions were handled in stainless steel
hoods.)
Four of the 14 subjects cut their hands
with contaminated objects; fortunately, in each
case,
the excised
activity.
tissues
All 14 subjects were removed in the summe
(The smaller concen-
contained little radio-
One other man burned his hand while
carrying out the carbon-sodium peroxide fusion
procedure.
1945 from this type of work because urine assz
indicated that their body burdens were approac
or had exceeded the then maximum permissible =
(7 counts per minute per 24-hour urine specime
suggesting a body burden of 1 Ug or 0.06 Ui).
B.
Three of our subjects worked in the Puri-
As might be expected, exposures during the late
spring and summer caused great concern about the
health of these workers.
The following excerpt is
taken from the Monthly Progress Report of the Chemistry and Metallurgy Division for May 1945 (issued
Purification Operation
tion Group in the Chemistry and Metallurpy Re:
Division.
of purifying by wet chemical methods the plut:
Produced by the piles in Oak Ridge and later
Hanford.
June 1, 1945):
This group was given the responsib:
Because it was believed that nonmet
impurities could best be removed by subsequen
"The health situation in the recovery laboratories has become much worse in the past month due
chemistry procedures (see next section), this
concentrated on removing contaminating metals
The flow sheet used in the purification
to the great increase in amount of product which is
being processed.
The trend in 24-hour urine counts
is definitely upward.
Because of this situation
and because shutdown of recovery will essentially
shut down purification, as well as increase holdup of product, every effort is being made toa
improve the health situation.
Forced air respira-
tion? until July 1945 is shown in Fig. 6,
Pl
nium nitrate slurry received in 160-gram lots
metal containers from Hanford was dissolved,
diluted (cut), assayed, and transferred (some
with considerable difficulty) into a closed s
On the average, these preliminary steps took
tors have been put into use, although they have not
3.3 days.
The following procedures were then
materially altered the nose counts yet.
ried out:
(a) reducing pul (or Pur) nitrat
Contamina-
iodide;
REREKKERK
The reason for the accidents presumably was
the unsuspected radiation-induced fragility of the
glass vessels used in these procedures.
It was
believed that alpha particles alone would not affect
the glass, but irradiation by neutrons arising from
interaction of alpha particles with boron in Pyrex
glass had not been anticipated.
ka RKRAK
There is a story that great difficulty was
encountered in the fluorination of this ill-fated
batch of plutonium. We have not been able to verify
this.
(b) precipitating py ltl oxalate and d
solving as put with bromate and nitric acid;
(c) precipitating plutonium as sodium plutony
acetate and dissolving in HNO 5 (d) ether ext
ing plutonyl nitrate from the acid solution c
ing ammonium nitrate; and (e) reducing pluton
nitrate with lodide and precipitating as the
late.
This product, recovered in about 97 pe
yield, was given to the Fluorination Group.
rification of plutonium in this form continue