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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.
S. Ceccuzzi, E. Barbato, A. Cardinali, C. Castaldo, R. Cesario, M. Marinucci, F. Mirizzi, L. Panaccione, G. L. Ravera, F. Santini, G. Schettini, A. A. Tuccillo
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 64 | Number 4 | November 2013 | Pages 748-761
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST13-A24095
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Recent experiments on lower hybrid (LH) penetration at reactor-relevant densities, together with the recent demonstration of the technological viability of the passive-active multijunction launcher on long pulses, have removed major concerns about the employment of LH waves on next-generation tokamaks, where LH could profitably drive far-off-axis plasma current, allowing current profile control and helping in sustaining burning performance. In this frame and with the aim of being prepared for the design phase of the next experimental reactors, preliminary investigations on the possibility of using LH on DEMO have been started under the supervision of the European Fusion Development Agreement. This paper reports the outcomes of these studies, addressing three main questions: Is LH useful for DEMO? If so, which setting of physics parameters makes it as effective as possible? Last, can available technology fulfill such demands?From the physics viewpoint, deposition sensitivity to launcher poloidal position, scrape-off layer parameters, and peak n|n+ have been analyzed, indicating the equatorial injection of 5-GHz waves with n|n+peak = 1.8 as the most favorable option. On the engineering side, specific research and development needs have been investigated on the basis of available information and sensible assumptions, showing that most of the components of the transmission line and, of highest priority, radio-frequency vacuum windows demand intense development.