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Fusion Science and Technology
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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.
Satoshi Suzuki, Kazuyoshi Sato, Masanori Araki, Kazuyuki Nakamura, Masayuki Dairaku, Kenji Yokoyama, Masato Akiba
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 30 | Number 3 | December 1996 | Pages 788-792
Plasma-Facing Components: Analysis and Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST96-A11963032
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The divertor plate of next generation tokamak device such as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is subjected to high heat and particle fluxes from the plasma. The armor material of the divertor plate will be damaged by plasma disruptions. Therefore the divertor components are required to be easily repaired or replaced. To realize the easy maintenance of divertor high heat flux components, the thermal bond layer (TBL) concept is the most promising. The TBL is a soft braze material which has a low melting temperature such as lead-based alloys. By using TBL for divertor high heat flux components, the damaged armor tiles are expected to be easily replaceable. Moreover, TBL plays a role of a compliant interlayer to reduce the interfacial thermal stress between the armor tile and the heat sink substrate. The authors have developed and tested Divertor Mock-UPS with lead-based TBL. This paper presents the results of the high heat flux experiments on the Divertor Mock-UPS with the TBL. The mock-up consists of replaceable armor blocks and a permanent substrate which is made of pure copper. The armor block consists of a bonded structure with armor tiles and a copper pivot. The armor blocks are brazed onto the substrate with pure lead. The permanent substrate has parallel cooling tubes which have twisted tape insert to enhance heat transfer. The high heat flux experiments on these mock-ups were carried out at JAERI Electron Beam Irradiation System (JEBIS). For the simulation of normal operation of ITER, the incident heat flux of 5 MW/m2 at a maximum pulse duration of 50 s was loaded; and for the simulation of transient period of ITER, the heat flux of up to 15 MW/m2 at a maximum pulse duration of 10 s was loaded. The thermal performance of the mock-ups was stably sustained against both thermal loads.