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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.
C. Gormezano, P. Buratti, M. L. Apicella, E. Barbato, G. Bracco, A. Cardinali, C. Castaldo, R. Cesario, S. Cirant, F. Crisanti, M. de Benedetti, B. Esposito, D. Frigione, L. Gabellieri, E. Giovannozzi, G. Granucci, H. Kroegler, M. Leigheb, M. Marinucci, D. Pacella, L. Panaccione, V. Pericoli-Ridolfini, L. Pieroni, S. Podda, F. Romanelli, M. Romanelli, P. Smeulders, C. Sozzi, A. A. Tuccillo, O. Tudisco
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 45 | Number 3 | May 2004 | Pages 303-322
Technical Paper | Frascati Tokamak Upgrade (FTU) | doi.org/10.13182/FST04-A516
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The main physics results achieved in the recent years in the Frascati Tokamak Upgrade (FTU) are reviewed. The main focus of research has been the development of performance plasmas at high densities (up to 4 × 1020 m-3), high magnetic field (up to 8 T) and plasma current (up to 1.6 MA), that are therefore in a domain of relevance for burning physics experiments such as ITER. The main tools consist in the development of plasma conditioning techniques and the use of various electron heating and current drive systems. Improved confinement regimes have been developed, including (a) the production of steady electron internal transport barriers at high density and electron temperature (up to central electron temperature of 11 keV at a central density of 0.9 × 1020 m3), (b) the production of repetitive pellet enhanced plasma modes with deep pellet deposition leading to a substantial increase of the neutron yield (and a record FTU value of the fusion product niTiE up to 0.8 × 1020 m-3 keVs), and (c) the production of radiation improved modes at high magnetic field. Main results on the supporting physics program will also be given in the domain of plasma wave physics (lower hybrid current drive, electron cyclotron resonance frequency, ion Bernstein waves), heat and impurities transport, and magnetohydrodynamic studies.