Experiments were conducted to measure the rate of vaporization of elemental mercury from molten lead to provide a basis for estimating radiological source terms for the APT (Accelerator Production of Tritium project) lead blanket. These data also have application to other accelerator targets in which mercury may be created by proton spallation in lead. Molten pools of lead with from 0.01% to 0.10% mercury were prepared under inert conditions. Experiments were conducted which varied in duration from several hours to as long as a month to measure the mercury vaporization from the lead pools. The melt pools and gas atmospheres were controlled at 340 degrees C during the tests, above the melting temperature of lead. Parameters which were varied in the tests included the mercury concentrations, gas flow rates over the melt, circulation in the melts, gas atmosphere compositions and the addition of aluminum to the melts. The vaporization of mercury was found to scale roughly linearly with the concentration of mercury in the pool. Variations in the gas flow rates were not found to have any effect on the mass transfer, however circulation of the melt by a submerged stirrer did enhance the mercury vaporization rate. The rate of mercury vaporization under a high-purity argon atmosphere was found to exceed that for an air atmosphere by as much as a factor of from ten to 20; the causal factor in this variation was the formation of an oxide layer over the melt pool with the air atmosphere which retarded mass transfer across the melt-atmosphere interface. Aluminum was introduced into the melt to investigate its effect upon the mercury vaporization rate. No effect was observed for a case under a high-purity argon atmosphere, which suggests that there are no chemical effects of the aluminum on the vaporization kinetics. With an air atmosphere, the presence of aluminum in the melt reduced the mercury vaporization by a factor of six in comparison to the identical test but without aluminum, suggesting that aluminum in the lead/ mercury melt retards the vaporization of mercury by creating a surface oxide layer in addition to the lead-oxide layer or by changing the character of the lead-oxide layer, thereby increasing the mass transfer resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]