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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.
Kazunori Isozaki, Takashi Ashida, Kouzou Sumino, Satoru Nakai
Nuclear Technology | Volume 150 | Number 1 | April 2005 | Pages 56-66
Technical Paper | Sodium Technology | doi.org/10.13182/NT05-A3605
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The purpose of the MK-III program is to upgrade the irradiation capability of the liquid sodium-cooled experimental fast reactor JOYO. As a result, the neutron flux density of the core was increased, and the reactor thermal power was increased to 140 MW(thermal) from the originally designed 100 MW(thermal). To accommodate the increased thermal power, the flow rates of sodium coolant in the primary and secondary systems were increased by 20 and 10%, respectively. Also, all intermediate heat exchangers and dump heat exchangers were replaced with new ones. The replacement of these large sodium components was carried out over an [approximately]1-yr period with both fuel and molten sodium still in the reactor vessel (RV).Major challenges in the replacement were the control of impurity ingress to existing systems and protection from radiation exposure in the high-dose-rate regions inside the containment vessel. During the replacement, the seal bag method, impurity concentration monitoring of cover gas, and low-pressure control of cover gas were applied to prevent damage to existing components and systems, such as the RV, fuel subassemblies, sodium piping, and tanks. The measures taken to reduce the radiation exposure were a lowering of the surrounding dose rate through the use of temporary shielding, shortening of the operation time near the high-dose-rate area by first doing thorough training, and the employment of protection equipment to avoid contamination. The replacement of components was completed without major trouble, and methods applied for the replacement proved to be effective in the operation and maintenance of sodium-cooled reactors.