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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.
Charles A. Gentile, James L. Anderson, Paul H. LaMarche
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 28 | Number 3 | October 1995 | Pages 1327-1329
Design, Operation, and Maintenance of Tritium System | Proceedings of the Fifth Topical Meeting on Tritium Technology In Fission, Fusion, and Isotopic Applications Belgirate, Italy May 28-June 3, 1995 | doi.org/10.13182/FST95-A30595
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The TFTR tritium operations staff has successfully received, stored, handled, and processed over five hundred thousand curies of tritium for the purpose of supporting D-T (Deuterium-Tritium) operations at TFTR. Tritium operations personnel nominally provide continuous round the clock coverage (24 hours/day, 7 days/week) in shift complements consisting of 1 supervisor and 3 operators. Tritium Shift Supervisors and operators are required to have 5 years of operational experience in either the nuclear or chemical industry and to become certified for their positions. The certification program provides formal instruction, as well as on the job training. The certification process requires 4 to 6 months to complete, which includes an oral board lasting up to 4 hours at which time the candidate is tested on their knowledge of Tritium Technology and TFTR Tritium systems. Once an operator is certified, the training process continues with scheduled training weeks occurring once every 5 weeks. During D-T operations at TFTR the operators must evacuate the tritium area due to direct radiation from TFTR D-T pulses. During this time operators maintain cognizance over tritium systems via a real time TV camera system. Operators are able to gain access to the Tritium area between TFTR D-T pulses, but have been excluded from the tritium area during D-T pulsing for periods up to 30 minutes. Tritium operators are responsible for delivering tritium gas to TFTR as well as processing plasma exhaust gases which lead to the deposition of tritium oxide on disposable molecular sieve beds (DMSB). Once a DMSB is loaded, the operations staff remove the expended DMSB, and replace it with a new DMSB container. The TFTR tritium system is operated via detailed procedures which require operator sign off for system manipulation. There are >300 procedures controlling the operation of the tritium systems. In addition detailed procedures are employed to maintain configuration control over the tritium facility. All maintenance activities in the tritium area are controlled via a work permit system which requires that the Tritium Shift Supervisor sign the permit and be cognizant of work in the area. All manipulation of tritium systems during maintenance activities are performed under the direct supervision of the Tritium Shift Supervisor.