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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.
Yutai Katoh, Lance Snead
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 56 | Number 2 | August 2009 | Pages 1045-1052
Fusion Materials | Eighteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Part 2) | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A9049
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Limitations in operating conditions, primarily the steady-state operating temperature, of silicon carbide-based ceramics and composites for applications to structural and functional components in fusion blanket systems were critically examined based on the latest experimental results. Irradiation-induced high temperature swelling and irradiation creep were identified to be the likely factors limiting the upper temperature bound for structural applications, whereas irradiation-induced thermal conductivity degradation was identified to be the primary factor to limit the lower temperature bound when substantial heat flux is anticipated. For the application to flow channel inserts in liquid metal blankets, insulating properties will likely limit the upper temperature bound, whereas the lower temperature bound may be limited by swelling-induced secondary stress. Additionally, key scientific issues which need to be addressed for the better definition of design limitations were identified.