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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.
Craig Beidler, Günter Grieger, Franz Herrnegger, Ewald Harmeyer, Johann Kisslinger, Wolf Lotz, Henning Maassberg, Peter Merkel, Jürgen Nührenberg, Fritz Rau, Jörg Sapper, Francesco Sardei, Ruben Scardovelli, Arnulf Schlüter, Horst Wobig
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 17 | Number 1 | January 1990 | Pages 148-168
Technical Paper | Stellarator System | doi.org/10.13182/FST90-A29178
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The future experiment Wendelstein VII-X (W VII-X) is being developed at the Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik. A Helical Advanced Stellarator (Helias) configuration has been chosen because of its confinement and stability properties. The goals of W VII-X are to continue the development of the modular stellarator, to demonstrate the reactor capability of this stellarator line, and to achieve quasi-steady-state operation in a temperature regime >5 keV. This temperature regime can be reached in W VII-X if neoclassical transport plus the anomalous transport found in W VII-A prevail. A heating power of 20 MW will be applied to reach the reactor-relevant parameter regime. The magnetic field in W VII-X has five field periods. Other basic data are as follows: major radius R0 = 6.5 m, magnetic induction B0 = 3 T, stored magnetic energy W ≈ 0.88 GJ, and average plasma radius a = 0.65 m. Superconducting coils are favored because of their steady-state field, but pulsed water-cooled copper coils are also being investigated. Unlike planar circular magnetic field coils, which experience only a radially directed force, twisted coils are subject to a lateral force component as well. Studies of various superconducting coil systems for Helias configurations have shown that the magnitudes of these radial and lateral force components are comparable. Based on a support model, the mechanical stresses are calculated; all components of the stress tensor are of equal importance. Other studies being conducted are concerned with the many complex engineering aspects presented by the construction of nonplanar superconducting coils.