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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.
N. Akino et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 47 | Number 3 | April 2005 | Pages 758-762
Technical Paper | Fusion Energy - Plasma Engineering, Heating, Current Drive, and Control | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A777
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In the neutral beam injection (NBI) system, an extension of the pulse duration up to 30 sec has been intended to study quasi-steady state plasma on JT-60U. The four positive-ion based (P-NBI) units, which tangentially inject neutral beam to plasma, were mainly modified on the electric power supplies and the beam limiters to extend the pulse duration up to 30 sec with 2 MW at 80 keV per each. The seven P-NBI units, each of which perpendicularly injects for 10 sec, were conducted to operate in series for the total pulse duration of 30 sec. The ion source of the negative-ion based (N-NBI) unit, whose target beam energy is 500 keV for 10 sec, was also modified to reduce the heat load of the grid for long pulse operation. The reduction of the re-ionization of the neutral beam in the beam drift duct was a key to achieve a long pulse injection. It was found that the pressure rise in the beam drift duct, which gives the re-ionization rate, depended on the temperature of the re-ionization plates during NBI injection. Up to now, it was attained successfully that the pulse duration of the tangential P-NBI unit was extended up to 30 sec. 310 MJ of the total integrated injection energy into JT-60U plasma was achieved, including the negative-ion based NBI operation for 17 sec at 366 keV.