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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.
R.J. Thome, R.D. Pillsbury, Jr., W.R. Mann
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 4 | Number 2 | September 1983 | Pages 453-458
Blanket and First Wall Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST83-A22905
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The rapid decay of magnetic flux during a plasma disruption induces voltages, currents, and Lorentz loadings in nearby electrically-conducting material. Present designs employ toroidal shells or shell segments near the plasma. These shells are divided into sectors for assembly and maintenance considerations, but may have toroidally-continuous conducting paths due to the need for vacuum boundaries. Voltages induced across sector gaps may initiate arcing and subsequent material damage. In addition, induced eddy currents in the shells can interact with the toroidal field and generate large net torques on a sector. A finite element model was used to estimate the induced sector gap voltages and net overturning moments following a 10 ms disruption. The number of shells, toroidal continuity, resistivity, and shell thicknesses were varied. Results are presented that show the effects of these changes on the sector gap voltages and induced loads.