Fuel-element failures in Hanford single-pass reactors 1944--1971

The primary objective of the Hanford Environmental Dose Reconstruction (HEDR) Project is to estimate the radiation dose that individuals could have received as a result of emissions since 1944 from the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Hanford Site near Richland, Washington. To estimate the doses, the staff of the Source Terms Task use operating information from historical documents to approximate the radioactive emissions. One source of radioactive emissions to the Columbia River came from leaks in the aluminum cladding of the uranium metal fuel elements in single-pass reactors. The purpose of this letter report is to provide photocopies of the documents that recorded these failures. The data from these documents will be used by the Source Terms Task to determine the contribution of single-pass reactor fuel-element failures to the radioactivity of the reactor effluent from 1944 through 1971. Each referenced fuel-element failure occurring in the Hanford single-pass reactors is addressed. The first recorded failure was in 1948, the last in 1970. No records of fuel-element failures were found in documents prior to 1948. Data on the approximately 2000 failures which occurred during the 28 years (1944--1971) of Hanford single-pass reactor operations are provided in this report