Dana heavy-water plant

The initial plan was to contract with private industry for a 10-ton per day production plant. A later decision put the plant at the inactivated Dana Heavy Water Plant of the Atomic Energy Commission at Newport, Indiana, within the Wabash River Ordnance Works. A patent dispute that resulted in a restraining order by the Chief Justice of the United States and problems with contractors visiting the new site delayed construction. Finally in 1959, Food Machinery and Chemical Company, the low bidder, got the contract and construction was planned for 1960. Shortly after the approval, the Chemical Corps supplemented the contract to provide for a VX weapon-filling plant.129130... 

In the heavy-water plants constmcted at Savannah River and at Dana, these considerations led to designs in which the relatively economical GS process was used to concentrate the deuterium content of natural water to about 15 mol %. Vacuum distillation of water was selected (because there is Httle likelihood of product loss) for the additional concentration of the GS product from 15 to 90% D2O, and an electrolytic process was used to produce the final reactor-grade concentrate of 99.75% D2O. 

The first dual-temperature plant for the Manhattan District Heavy Water program was built at Dana and the second at Savannah River. The process was known as GS process (Girdler-Sulfide or Girdler-Spevack). A very simplified flow sheet of this process resembles Fig. 3C. 

Hants. Three water distillation plants were designed and built for the Manhattan District by E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, Inc. These plants were located at Morgantown, West Virginia, Childersburg, Alabama, and Dana, Indiana. I rts of the plants were started up in June 1943, and concentrations reached steady-state values in June 1944. About 90 days were needed to reach steady state. The plants were shut down in October 1945 because of reduced demand and because of the high cost of their heavy water. 

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