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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.
Kwangjin Jung, Yeanjin Kim, Hongsuk Chung, Hee-Seok Kang, Sei-Hun Yun, Do-Hee Ahn
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 71 | Number 3 | April 2017 | Pages 416-421
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1291250
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Tritium Storage & Delivery System (SDS) is part of a tokamak-type nuclear fusion reactor fuel cycle. For the safety of this cycle, the hydrogen isotopes are stored in a metal hydride form in the SDS. Depleted uranium (DU) was chosen as the storage material. DU hydride can be heated to very high temperatures that are sufficient for pumping hydrogen isotopes without using gas pumps. The experimental apparatus used to test the experimental DU bed consists of a tank that stores and measures the hydrogen, and a DU bed used for the hydriding and dehydriding of hydrogen. The DU bed is a vertical double-cylinder type with sintered metal filters. The bed is composed of primary and secondary vessels. The primary vessel contains DU, and a vacuum layer is formed between the primary and secondary vessels. In this study, recent experimental results on the pretreatment (activation and powderization) of DU and the direct hydrogen recovery and delivery of a DU bed are presented. In addition, the relationship between hydrogen pressure and temperature in the DU bed is obtained.