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Fusion Science and Technology
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.
Brian M. Patterson, Kimberly A. Obrey, George J. Havrilla
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 59 | Number 1 | January 2011 | Pages 121-125
Technical Paper | Nineteenth Target Fabrication Meeting | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A11513
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Confocal micro X-ray fluorescence (confocal MXRF) is continuing to be explored as a method for characterizing copper and argon doped sputtered beryllium capsules. Previously demonstrated was the utility of confocal MXRF in both the two- and three-dimensional modes and overlaying the data with X-ray micro computed tomography as a method of nondestructive analysis. In this paper, the relative amount of copper dopant was measured as a function of capsule theta, examining the changes in the amounts of copper around the circumference of the capsule and comparing the relative amount of copper between capsules. A theta stage was specially constructed in order to perform line scans through the capsule wall while keeping the geometry of the measurement constant. Four capsules (one unpyrolyzed and three pyrolyzed) were examined with this method. The noise of the measurements averaged 1.43%, and differences within a capsule as a function of theta were 2.15%, with differences between capsules [approximately]13% indicating that the measurement noise was approximately half the overall variation in copper signal and far less than the measured differences between capsules. These differences in the amount of copper within a capsule and between capsules are much greater than that obtained using absorption techniques.