LEACHING OF TAMALPAIS DEBRIS

From Tamalpais debris crushed to <53 mu , 5.5, 19.6, and 12.5 f the alpha, beta, and gamma activities, respectively, were leached in 72 hr at room temperature by a 100 to 1 weight excess of ground water from the Nevada test site. The extracted alpha-activity material was> 97% Pu/sup 239/ and < 3% Am/sup 241/, and the gamma was 92% Ru/sup106/, 4.7% ZrNb/sup 95/, and 3.1% Cs/137/. The beta activities could not be identified. The ground water leached 10 to 20 times as high a percentage of activity from Tamalpais debris as from Rainier debris in a previous study, but on a count rate basis the total activity released to the ground water was a factor of 2 greater for Rainier than for Tamalpais. Increasing the leaching temperature from room temperature to boiling doubled the amount of active material extracted. increasing the particle size clsssification from <53 to 5901190 mu decreased the extraction efficiently approximately 3- fold. (auth