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The Education, Training & Workforce Development Division provides communication among the academic, industrial, and governmental communities through the exchange of views and information on matters related to education, training and workforce development in nuclear and radiological science, engineering, and technology. Industry leaders, education and training professionals, and interested students work together through Society-sponsored meetings and publications, to enrich their professional development, to educate the general public, and to advance nuclear and radiological science and engineering.
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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.
Joel A. Kulesza, Roger L. Martz
Nuclear Technology | Volume 195 | Number 1 | July 2016 | Pages 55-70
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NT15-122
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper provides results for calculations performed using MCNP6’s unstructured mesh (UM) capabilities based on the three problems described in the Kobayashi benchmark suite. These calculations are performed to provide a comprehensive and consistent basis for the verification and validation of MCNP6’s constructive solid geometry (CSG) and UM neutron transport capabilities relative to a well-known analytic benchmark. First, preexisting MCNP5 CSG models are updated and reexecuted to form a basis of comparison with UM for both the consistency of the numeric results and speed of execution. Next, a series of UM calculations is performed using first- and second-order tetrahedral and hexahedral elements with mesh generated using Abaqus. In addition, a different first-order tetrahedral mesh is generated with Attila4MC in order to investigate the effect on the results. When executed, the results for both CSG and UM agree among themselves and with the benchmark quantities within reasonable statistical fluctuations (at worst, the results agree within 2σ or 10% but generally within 1σ or 5%) and recognizing from historical work that improved agreement is possible with additional variance-reduction effort. As expected, for the simple geometries herein, we find the CSG calculations completing approximately ten times faster than the comparable fastest UM calculations. We find minor speed differences (~1%) between multigroup and continuous-energy nuclear data and significant speed differences (factor ~100) between different element types. As such, the timing results support the recommendation that users run with the simplest UM element type that adequately represents the problem geometry, ideally first-order hexahedra, and with the most convenient nuclear data energy treatment.