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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.
Sal B. Rodriguez, Randall O. Gauntt, Randy Cole, Katherine McFadden, Fred Gelbard, Len Malczynski, Billy Martin, Shripad T. Revankar, Karen Vierow, Dave Louie, Louis Archuleta
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 52 | Number 3 | October 2007 | Pages 752-755
Technical Paper | The Technology of Fusion Energy - Nonelectric Applications | doi.org/10.13182/FST07-A1580
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A hypothetical Z-Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE) plant was coupled to a sulfur iodine (SI) thermochemical cycle using a new version of MELCOR called MELCOR-H2. MELCOR-H2 was designed to model nuclear reactors that are coupled to thermochemical plants for the production of electricity and hydrogen.The Z-IFE input model consisted of three major system components - a fusion heat source control volume with several types of boundary conditions, an SI loop, and a Brayton secondary system. The components were coupled in order to investigate system feedback and hydrogen production. The input model was modified so that various parametric studies could be conducted. Particular emphasis was placed on plant operating temperature and maximizing hydrogen production.This paper summarizes the results of the SI system model as it was driven by temperature changes in the primary circuit that simulated those that would occur in a Z-IFE driven reactor.