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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.
Kenkichi Ushigusa, JT-60 Team
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 39 | Number 2 | March 2001 | Pages 315-321
Fusion Technology Plenary | doi.org/10.13182/FST01-A11963254
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Progress on NNB technology enables to demonstrate the N-NB driven current of around 1 MA with the efficiency of 0.155×1020nT−2A/W. A newly installed 110GHz ECH system has demonstrated efficient central electron heating (Te(0)>15keV) and local current profile control. Multiple pellet injection from high-field-top side into ELMy H-mode plasma has produced a high confinement plasma (HHy2~1.05) at high density regime (ne/nGW~0.7). The both-leg divertor pumping has enhanced He exhaust by ~40%. Ar-puff experiments have improved confinement at high density with detached divertor due to high pedestal temperature. Based on these progresses in each issue, discharge optimization has been made to demonstrate integrated high performance plasmas. In the two advanced operation regimes (the reversed magnetic shear (RS) and the weak magnetic shear high-βp ELMy H-mode), discharges have been sustained near the steady-state current profile solution under full non-inductive current drive with proper driven current profiles (High βp; HHy2~1.4 and βN ~2.5 with N-NB, RS; HHy2~2.2 and βN ~2 with fBS~80%).