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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.
Plamen V. Petkov
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 159 | Number 2 | June 2008 | Pages 221-227
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE159-221
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A statistical method to identify probability density function was previously reported in the literature. Analyses there include constructing a histogram that allows the characteristics of an unknown statistical distribution to be evaluated. Selection of the necessary number of bars, with detailed discussion, is an important issue. As a logical extension of that activity, this paper proposes constructing two sets of symmetrized and nonsymmetrical histograms. Comparing entropies through parameters called entropy coefficients allows the histogram with the optimal number of bars to be found. Additionally, Pearson's criterion is evaluated for verification. Two propositions are formulated in order to generalize the obtained results.This paper presents three cases that summarize the classification, developed after comparing symmetrized and nonsymmetrical histograms, and each case is discussed. Two of the cases demonstrate that symmetrical histograms represent properties of unknown statistical distributions when certain requirements are met. The third case summarizes results from data-trend evaluation, where symmetrization is not appropriate. Conclusions that follow the results are drawn.The presented approach was implemented and tested in a developed set of computer programs for data-trend analysis at the "Kozloduy" nuclear power plant. The source information has been obtained from Units 1 through 4, which are equipped with VVER-440/V230 reactors.