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2024 ANS Annual Conference
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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.
T.J. Bartel, R.R. Peterson, G.A. Moses
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 10 | Number 3 | November 1986 | Pages 1253-1258
Inertial Confinement Fusion Target and Reaction Chamber Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST86-A24903
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Two-dimensional radiation hydrodynamic simulations of a light ion fusion target generated microfireball in a stratified gas atmosphere have been performed. The target location in a two region cavity was varied with the intent to reduce the overpressure on the diodes at the walls of a target chamber with a single cavity gas. Helium and nitrogen at 15 torr were used as the cavity gases; target explosions of 200 and 800 MJ were investigated. It was found that placing the target in a helium region surrounded by nitrogen could reduce the overpressure by a factor of 2 when compared with a single gas cavity of nitrogen. The surface heat flux was also reduced from a pure helium gas cavity.