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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
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.
M. Zucchetti, F. Bombarda, B. Coppi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 61 | Number 1 | January 2012 | Pages 222-226
Fusion-Fission Hybrids and Transmutation | Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Emerging Nuclear Energy Systems | doi.org/10.13182/FST12-A13423
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The foreseen future expansion of nuclear power would involve a solution to burn the long half-life transuranics (TRU) in the spent nuclear fuel discharged from LWRs. Moreover, high-energy neutrons can be very useful for many processes. The study addresses the development of a tokamak neutron source for a hybrid fission-fusion demonstration experimental device, using Ignitor-based technologies. Ignitor is a proposed compact high magnetic field tokamak, aimed at reaching ignition in DT plasmas. A revision of its operating parameters, in order to act a as a suitable neutron source in a hybrid device, is discussed, and a new operating scenario is proposed. Features of the tokamak neutron source are illustrated and preliminary results are discussed. A two-phase project is described, in order to test an Ignitor-based neutron source and then implement an experimental device for demonstration of technical feasibility of TRU transmutation.
