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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.
Takashi Kiguchi, Hiroshi Motoda, Toshio Kawai
Nuclear Technology | Volume 17 | Number 2 | February 1973 | Pages 168-183
Technical Paper | Isotopes Separation | doi.org/10.13182/NT73-A31244
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The parameters of a uranium-enriching cascade, i.e., the cut and the separation factor, are considered to be fluctuating stochastically. The covariance matrices of the total uranium flow and 235UF6 flow were derived by the classical stochastic theory for evaluating the effect of stochastic fluctuations of these parameters to steady-state plant performance. Also the stationary random process theory is applied to the kinetic equations of the cascade, and the autocorrelation function of the 235UF6 flow and enrichment is derived for evaluating the time behavior of the plant performance caused by random fluctuation of these system parameters. Numerical values illustrate the response of product flow and enrichment to the fluctuations, which are both time independent and dependent, of the cut and the separation gain of stages and centrifuges. These data lead to a conclusion concerning the tolerances of centrifuge parameters and stage controllers.