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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.
R. Paul Drake, James H. Hammer, Charles W. Hartman, L. John Perkins, Dmitri D. Ryutov
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 30 | Number 3 | December 1996 | Pages 310-325
Technical Paper | Plasma Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST96-A30734
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Adiabatic compression of a preformed closed field line configuration by an imploding liner is considered. Three configurations are discussed: the field-reversed configuration, the spheromak, and the Z-pinch. It is shown that by employing a two-dimensional compression, one can reach a breakeven condition with an energy input into the plasma as low as 100 kJ. Typical initial dimensions of the liner are length, 5 to 6 cm; radius, ∼1 cm; and wall thickness, ∼0.01 cm. Liner mass is in the range of a few grams. It is assumed that the initial plasma beta is of the order of unity; in this case, the final beta is much greater than 1, and the plasma is in a wall confinement regime. Typical plasma parameters for the final state (for the linear compression ratio equal to 10) are density, 1021 cm−3; temperature, 10 keV; and magnetic field, 107 G. A brief discussion of various phenomena affecting the wall confinement is presented (magnetic field diffusion, radiative losses, and impurity penetration); the conclusion is drawn that the heat losses to the walls are modest and are not a factor that limits plasma enhancement Q. It is shown that at least for relatively thin liners, whose compressibility can be neglected, what limits Q is a relatively short liner dwell time near the maximum compression point. The scaling law for the Q versus the input parameters of the system is derived, which shows a relatively weak dependence of Q on the input energy. Possible ways for increasing the dwell time are discussed. Reactor potentialities of the system are briefly described. It is emphasized that the possibility of performing crucial experiments on small- to medium-scale experimental devices may considerably shorten the development path for the system under consideration. Some nonfusion applications of the system described are mentioned. Among them are burning and transmutation of long-lived fusion products, medical isotope production, a pulsed source of hard X rays, and fusion neutrons.