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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.
Y. Hatano, V. Kh. Alimov, A. V. Spitsyn, N. P. Bobyr, D. I. Cherkez, S. Abe, O. V. Ogorodnikova, N. S. Klimov, B. I. Khripunov, A. V. Golubeva, V. M. Chernov, M. Oyaidzu, T. Yamanishi, M. Matsuyama
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 67 | Number 2 | March 2015 | Pages 361-364
Proceedings of TRITIUM 2013 | doi.org/10.13182/FST14-T30
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The effects of displacement damage, plasma exposure and heat loads on T retention in reduced-activation ferritic/martensitic (RAFM) steels were investigated by exposing the steels to DT gas at 473 K. Despite enormous change in surface morphology, T retention in the heat-loaded specimen was comparable with that in the unloaded specimen. The exposure to plasma resulted in a drastic increase in T retention at the surface and/or sub surface. However, the T trapped at the surface/subsurface was easily removed by maintaining the specimens in air at ∼300 K. Formation of radiation-induced defects led to a significant increase in T retention, and T trapped in the defects was not removed at ∼300 K. These observations suggest that displacement damages have the largest effects on T retention at ∼473 K.