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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.
Zvi Shkedi, Robert C. McDonald, John J. Breen, Stephen J. Maguire, Joe Veranth
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 28 | Number 4 | November 1995 | Pages 1720-1731
Technical Paper | Electrolytic Device | doi.org/10.13182/FST95-A30436
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Apparent excess heat is observed in light water electrolytic cells containing a variety of nickel cathodes, a platinum anode, and an electrolyte of K2CO3 in H2O. High-accuracy calorimetric measurements show apparent excess heat in the range of 15 to 37% of input power if a 100% Faraday efficiency is assumed for H2 and O2 gas release. The H2 and O2 gases released during electrolysis are recombined in a vessel external to the cell, and the quantity of recombined H2O is compared with the quantity of H2O expected from 100% efficient electrolysis. The measured Faraday efficiency is shown to be significantly <100%, and conventional chemistry can account for the entire amount of observed apparent excess heat to within an accuracy of better than 0.5%.