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Division Spotlight
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
Meeting Spotlight
2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
Standards Program
The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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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.
Richard Blake Codell
Nuclear Technology | Volume 148 | Number 2 | November 2004 | Pages 205-212
Technical Paper | High-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal | doi.org/10.13182/NT04-A3560
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission uses the ASHPLUME model in its evaluation of the basaltic volcanism scenario at the possible Yucca Mountain repository. The mixing of magma with the spent-fuel waste form is tied to a reasonable but unverified model that predicts that no dense tephra/fuel particles would form. An alternative model uses a mixing rule that allows the formation of dense tephra/fuel particles that would be transported in the volcanic plume differently. The alternative model shows significant sensitivity to the spent-fuel particle size distribution. However, differences in results between the two models are on average less than a factor of 2.