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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.
Gilles Bourque, Bernard Terreault, Brian C. Gregory, Guenther W. Pacher, Horst D. Pacher, Barry L. Stansfield, Dennis Whyte, W. Zuzak
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 17 | Number 4 | July 1990 | Pages 588-596
Technical Paper | Experimental Device | doi.org/10.13182/FST90-A29195
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Plasma contamination due to the generation of impurity molecules has been studied by mass spectrometry and by visible emission spectroscopy in the Tokamak de Varennes. The dominant effects are carbon monoxide formation, which is correlated with the residual water vapor pressure in the vacuum chamber, and the formation of C1, C2, and C3 hydrocarbons. The measured molecular fluxes are sufficient to account for a large part of the plasma impurity content. Visible spectroscopy indicates that the plasma is significantly affected by these chemical impurity sources. The molecules appear to originate mainly from the stainless steel walls rather than from the graphite limiters.