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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.
L. Stefan, N. Trantea, A. Roberts, S. Strikwerda, A. Antoniazzi, D. Zaharia
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 71 | Number 3 | April 2017 | Pages 236-240
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1288413
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
ICSI has recently completed the conceptual design of the Cernavoda Tritium Removal Facility (CTRF). CTRF is sized to process heavy water from 2 CANDU reactors, treating 40 kg/h of 10–54 Ci/kg heavy water over 40 years. CTRF removes tritium using Liquid Phase Catalytic Exchange (LPCE) paired with Cryogenic Distillation (CD).
The CTRF design has implemented improvements based on design and operational knowledge from DTRF, WTRF, ICSI pilot plant, other tritium laboratories, and industry. Additionally, there are site, client, and regulatory requirements that have imposed differences from other TRF designs. This paper identifies the key improvements and requirements, explains the rationale for the design choice and highlights drawbacks. The key improvements and requirements, grouped under four categories, include:
Safety – a Safe Shutdown State, higher seismic qualifications, restrictions on D2O transfers, extensive use of double containment;
Core Systems – use of a mixed catalyst bed for the LPCE, no catalytic oxidation skid, helium refrigeration system cooling of the cryoadsorbers, better control of the CD cascade by using pumps on reverse flows, and the use of a CuO reactor with molecular sieves dryers for cleanup of tritium in glovebox atmospheres;
Site, client and regulatory requirements – lower worker dose limits, independent utilities from nuclear Units 1 and 2, different targets for environmental releases and management of external hazards, and the application of the latest reactor grade Regulatory Standards in force in Romania;
Auxiliary systems, utilities, and the building – removal of H2-O2 recombiner catalyst from the Air Detritiation System, use of a PEM electrolytic cell for D2 makeup, and no need for steam in the CTRF facility.