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CLEAN SMART bill reintroduced in Senate
Senators Ben Ray Luján (D., N.M.) and Tim Scott (R., S.C.) have reintroduced legislation aimed at leveraging the best available science and technology at U.S. national laboratories to support the cleanup of legacy nuclear waste.
The Combining Laboratory Expertise to Accelerate Novel Solutions for Minimizing Accumulated Radioactive Toxins (CLEAN SMART) Act, introduced on February 11, would authorize up to $58 million annually to develop, demonstrate, and deploy innovative technologies, targeting reduced costs and safer, faster remediation of sites from the Manhattan Project and Cold War.
Carl A. Detrick, James L. Kelly
Nuclear Technology | Volume 7 | Number 5 | November 1969 | Pages 472-477
Radiation | doi.org/10.13182/NT69-A28450
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The quantitative effects of certain factors on the radiation-induced graft polymerization of methyl methacrylate (MMA) and paper (cellulose) were determined. All irradiations were performed in a medium-intensity gamma radiation field created by neutron activation of 55Mn. Resultant radiation dose rates varied between 1.4 and 3.2 × 105 rads/h, initially, and diminished with a 2.58-h half-life. Sample preparation was an important variable in that paper samples immersed in MMA and irradiated immediately thereafter exhibited no grafting, whereas samples soaked 4 and 24 h prior to irradiation yielded increasing amounts of grafting for the same radiation dose. Hydroquinone, which serves as an ideal inhibitor for bulk MMA, yielded no induction period at all for the MMA-cellulose system. The effects of oxygen on the graft polymerization of MMA were similar to its effects on the homopolymerization of MMA. The use of acetone as a solvent for MMA enhanced the amount of graft polymerization. Even higher yields per absorbed dose were obtained using a water-acetone-MMA solution. Furthermore, no pre-irradiation “soak” was necessary to achieve grafting at relatively low absorbed doses in the MMA-solvent systems.