A FACILITY FOR THE STUDY OF THE EFFECTS OF NUCLEAR RADIATION ON MATERIALS

The Sandia Engineering Reactor Facility consists of a 5-Mw light water moderated heterogeneous-type nuclear reactor, a large dry irradiation room and the necessary laboratory space for the preparation and post-irradiation testing of material samples. This Facility will be used to study the effects of radiation on the engineering properties of materials. Equipment for producing additional environments of heat, cold, altitude and vibration will be available for compounding with the radiation enviroment during material tests. An interesting feature of the operating concept for this facility is the plant to operate the reactor on a continuous, 24-hour per day, seven-day per week basis except for required reactor shut downs. This feature means that provisions must be made in the design of the facitlity to provide for the remote insertion and removal of test objects during full power reactor operation. Instead of having several heavily shielded indiviaual hot cells,'' this facility has one large hot area.'' This hot area'' is separated from the remainder of the Facility by a 42-inch-thick concrete shielding wall containing six high-density lead Argonne Model 8 manipulators. Materials for post-irradiation means of a specically designed Mobile Remote Handler. This Handler is a mobile, electrically driven vehicle containing one man shielded by approximately 6 1/2 in. of lead. (auth