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Members are devoted to applying nuclear science and engineering technologies involving isotopes, radiation applications, and associated equipment in scientific research, development, and industrial processes. Their interests lie primarily in education, industrial uses, biology, medicine, and health physics. Division committees include Analytical Applications of Isotopes and Radiation, Biology and Medicine, Radiation Applications, Radiation Sources and Detection, and Thermal Power Sources.
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Nuclear Technology
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.
Peng Li, Weiping Shen, Shuming Wang, Chulei Zhou, Shiliang Xu
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 66 | Number 1 | July-August 2014 | Pages 142-149
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST13-709
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper presents a W mockup with an interlayer of diamond/Cu (DC) composite material. As a joining interlayer, DC composite material has high thermal conductivity and accommodative coefficient of thermal expansion. By adjusting the thickness of the DC layer and comparing different forms of armor, the optimal design is the brush armor mockup with a 1-mm-thickness DC layer. The thermal-structural behavior of this mockup was analyzed under the steady-state and transient heat flux by using ANSYS Workbench. The calculated temperature and stress indicate that the mockup can tolerate 10 MW/m2 steady-state heat flux at most. Then a transient heat flux (300 MW/m2 for 5 ms) is loaded on the top surface upon steady-state heat flux of 8 MW/m2. The surface temperature instantly rises to 2300°C, but a cracking trend is not shown at the loaded surface.
