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Fusion Science and Technology
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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.
Alexander Antipenkov, Christian Day, Hans-Dieter Adami
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 54 | Number 1 | July 2008 | Pages 35-38
Technical Paper | Iter and Fusion | doi.org/10.13182/FST08-A1760
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The ferrofluidic seal is being investigated as an internal rotary seal for tritium compatible mechanical roots type vacuum pumps. After its successful testing with helium and integration into a small (250 m3/h) test roots pump, the seal, made as a cartridge, has been integrated into a special test unit and is currently being tested with tritium in order to define the leak rates and the possible degradation of the ferrofluid under long term exposure to tritium radiation. The tritium pressure from one side of the seal is 0.125 MPa, the nitrogen pressure from the other side is 0.075 MPa, the rotation speed is maintained at 1500 rpm. The tritium leak through the cartridge contributes to the tritium concentration in the nitrogen, which is continuously measured by an ionisation chamber; the pressure in both chambers is continuously registered by precise pressure gauges. The experimental program is discussed.