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Glass strategy: Hanford’s enhanced waste glass program
The mission of the Department of Energy’s Office of River Protection (ORP) is to complete the safe cleanup of waste resulting from decades of nuclear weapons development. One of the most technologically challenging responsibilities is the safe disposition of approximately 56 million gallons of radioactive waste historically stored in 177 tanks at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
ORP has a clear incentive to reduce the overall mission duration and cost. One pathway is to develop and deploy innovative technical solutions that can advance baseline flow sheets toward higher efficiency operations while reducing identified risks without compromising safety. Vitrification is the baseline process that will convert both high-level and low-level radioactive waste at Hanford into a stable glass waste form for long-term storage and disposal.
Although vitrification is a mature technology, there are key areas where technology can further reduce operational risks, advance baseline processes to maximize waste throughput, and provide the underpinning to enhance operational flexibility; all steps in reducing mission duration and cost.
T. Kulsartov, I. Tazhibayeva, Yu. Gordienko, E. Chikhray, K. Tsuchiya, H. Kawamura, A. Kulsartova
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 60 | Number 3 | October 2011 | Pages 1139-1142
Blanket and Breeder Materials | Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Tritium Science and Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A12616
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Lithium-based oxide ceramics are considered as the candidate materials for solid breeders of future fusion reactors' blankets. Breeder's goal is effective, safe and reliable production of tritium as a result of lithium-neutron reactions. Main candidates as a breeder material are Li2O, Li4SiO4, Li2TiO3 and Li2ZrO3, which are able to keep their physical-chemical properties despite of lithium burn-up. Lithium metatitanate Li2TiO3 attracts the great attention due to its chemical stability and high speed of tritium release under low temperatures (from 200 to 400°C). This paper contains the results of the studies on tritium and helium release from the samples of irradiated lithium ceramics Li2TiO3.
