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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.
George Tsotridis, Hans Rother
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 27 | Number 4 | July 1995 | Pages 389-400
Technical Paper | First-Wall Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST95-A30359
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Plasma disruptions infusion reactors lead to high-energy deposition for short periods of time, causing melting of the first wall. A two-dimensional transient computer model has been developed that, by solving the equations of motion and energy, predicts the depths and the motion of the molten layers in small beam simulation experiments. It is demonstrated that convective flows caused by variations of surface tension—due to changes in material chemistry and surface temperature—play an important role in determining the depth and flow intensities of the molten layers. The calculated shapes and depths of the molten layers for Type 316 stainless steel have been compared with available experimental results and found to be in good agreement.
