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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.
Lawrence N. Oji, Adrienne L. Williams
Nuclear Technology | Volume 145 | Number 2 | February 2004 | Pages 215-229
Technical Paper | Reprocessing | doi.org/10.13182/NT04-A3471
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Batch laboratory experiments performed to evaluate uranium incorporation into aluminosilicate structures during synthesis are described. This research was conducted in response to plant problems related to the accumulation of uranium with aluminosilicates in low-level radioactive waste evaporators. Conditions that favor precipitation of aluminosilicates also foster uranium solid precipitation, so it is difficult to attribute problems with uranium accumulation to, for example, only the formation of the aluminosilicates. Infrared spectra show that sodium uranates, uranium silicates, and other uranium solids are formed during the synthesis of sodium aluminosilicates structures in the presence of uranium. Both amorphous and sodalite aluminosilicate phases, unlike the zeolite A phase, show appreciable affinity for uranium incorporation during their formation in the presence of uranium.
