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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.
Mélany Gouëllo, Jouni Hokkinen, Teemu Kärkelä, Ari Auvinen
Nuclear Technology | Volume 203 | Number 1 | July 2018 | Pages 85-91
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1430463
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This work is a contribution to the work performed in a paper on the understanding of the chemical reactions between cesium iodide and boron oxide in condensed phase, under conditions close to the ones prevailing in the primary circuit of a nuclear power plant in case of a severe accident. The thermal degradation of samples made from cesium iodide or cesium iodide and boron oxide mixtures has been investigated using the techniques of thermogravimetric analysis and differential thermal analysis at temperatures from 20°C to 1000°C. The boron-to-cesium molar ratio in the investigated mixture was fixed at about the value of 5 (B/Cs = 5). Apart from the dehydration of boric acid, evidence is presented for the formation of a vitreous compound at 360°C to 420°C, depending on the atmosphere composition.
Carrier gas composition also seemed to influence the behavior of the precursor mixture. While under air and argon, the recorded thermograms are similar. In the presence of argon/water vapor, a specific behavior and difference on reactivity is noticed, due to the adsorption of water from the carrier gas at the beginning of the process. It was also pointed out that the addition of water or oxygen delayed the glass formation process.