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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.
V. Tkachenko, A. V. Ovcharov, M. B. Rozenkevich
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 71 | Number 2 | February 2017 | Pages 207-214
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST16-130
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Vapor phase catalytic exchange is an important part of many hydrogen isotope separation processes. Some industrial hydrogen isotope separation processes are performed in a wide deuterium concentration range. The performance of catalysts in hydrogen-water vapor exchange reaction in the upper deuterium concentration limit is poorly investigated. The paper presents results of an investigation of catalytic activity of three catalyst types at the upper and lower limits of the deuterium concentration range. All catalyst experimental rate constants in protium-deuterium exchange demonstrated a tendency to increase with the growth of deuterium concentration. Experimental rate constants of catalysts in protium-tritium and deuterium-tritium exchange were found to remain constant. In this work the authors propose a method to be used for catalyst performance evaluation to obtain catalyst performance data for liquid phase catalytic exchange process models.