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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
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.
T. Venhaus, J. Poths
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 48 | Number 1 | July-August 2005 | Pages 601-604
Technical Paper | Tritium Science and Technology - Materials Interaction and Permeation | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A997
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We have hydrided thin (500 nm) films of Er with tritium to a stoichiometry of ErT2, and have been observing their 3He release characteristics at very low 3He/Er ratios. The films are stored in vacuum-tight metal containers and sampled on a timescale ranging from a day to several months. Analysis is performed with very high sensitivity using static noble gas mass spectrometry. For the first several years, 3He release is a fairly constant function of helium generation, and does not depend on the amount of helium accumulated in the film. There appears to be somewhat higher helium release at very early times (up to 2%), decreasing over 6 months to a fairly flat value (0.7%). This observation is consistent with a bubble nucleation and growth mechanism. The very early release behavior does not appear to be dependent upon the presence or growth of surface oxide layers.
