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DNFSB spots possible bottleneck in Hanford’s waste vitrification
Workers change out spent 27,000-pound TSCR filter columns and place them on a nearby storage pad during a planned outage in 2023. (Photo: DOE)
While the Department of Energy recently celebrated the beginning of hot commissioning of the Hanford Site’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP), which has begun immobilizing the site’s radioactive tank waste in glass through vitrification, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board has reported a possible bottleneck in waste processing. According to the DNFSB, unless current systems run efficiently, the issue could result in the interruption of operations at the WTP’s Low-Activity Waste Facility, where waste vitrification takes place.
During operations, the LAW Facility will process an average of 5,300 gallons of tank waste per day, according to Bechtel, the contractor leading design, construction, and commissioning of the WTP. That waste is piped to the facility after being treated by Hanford’s Tanks Side Cesium Removal (TSCR) system, which filters undissolved solid material and removes cesium from liquid waste.
According to a November 7 activity report by the DNFSB, the TSCR system may not be able to produce waste feed fast enough to keep up with the LAW Facility’s vitrification rate.
Kokooo, I. Murata, D. Nakano, A. Takahashi, F. Maekawa, Y. Jkeda
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 34 | Number 3 | November 1998 | Pages 980-984
Neutronics Experiments and Analysis (Poster Session) | doi.org/10.13182/FST98-A11963740
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Benchmark experiments on vanadium and vanadium alloy with D-T neutrons have been done at two angles, 0 degrees and 24.9 degrees, using the slab geometry and the time-of-flight (TOF) method. Data were collected for neutron energies ranging from 50 keV to 15 MeV. For vanadium, measurements were made for three slab thicknesses, i.e., 50.8 mm, 1524 mm, and 254 mm, whereas for the vanadium alloy, measurements were made only for 101.6-mm thickness. The measured neutron spectra were compared with MCNP-4A calculations using evaluated nuclear data from the JENDL-3.2, JENDL Fusion-File(IENDL-FF), FENDL/E-1.0 and European Fusion File veraon-3(EFF-3) libraries. The calculated data show reasonable agreement with the measurement, however, some differences are worth noting. Calculations for a slab thickness of 50.8 mm over the energy range from 0.05 to 0.1 MeV underestimate the measurements by about 40% at an angle of 24.9 degrees, while calculations for the energy range from 0.1 to 1.0 MeV, overestimate the measurements by about 40% at an angle of 0 degrees. Calculations made using the JENDL-FF library show good agreement with measurements for energies greater than 11 MeV. Calculations made using the FENDL/E-1.0 library give smaller results than any of the other three libraries in the energy range from 5 to 11 MeV.