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Thermal Hydraulics
The division provides a forum for focused technical dialogue on thermal hydraulic technology in the nuclear industry. Specifically, this will include heat transfer and fluid mechanics involved in the utilization of nuclear energy. It is intended to attract the highest quality of theoretical and experimental work to ANS, including research on basic phenomena and application to nuclear system design.
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Fusion Science and Technology
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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.
Warren H. Giedt, Jorge J. Sanchez, Thomas P. Bernat
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 49 | Number 4 | May 2006 | Pages 588-599
Technical Paper | Target Fabrication | doi.org/10.13182/FST06-A1172
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The influence of capsule wall material and the transfer gas surrounding the capsule on the time required for beta-heating-induced redistribution of a 50-50 mole percent mixture of deuterium and tritium (DT) in a spherical capsule are investigated analytically and numerically. The derivation of an analytical solution for the redistribution time in a one-dimensional binary diffusion model, which includes the thermal resistance of the capsule, is first described. This result shows that the redistribution time for a high conductivity capsule wall is approximately doubled after 8 days of 3He formation. In contrast, with a low thermal conductivity capsule wall (e.g., polyimide), the redistribution time would increase by less than 10%The substantial effect of the capsule wall resistance suggested that the resistance to heat transfer from the capsule through the surrounding transfer gas to the hohlraum wall would also influence the redistribution process. This was investigated with a spherical model, which was based on accounting for energy transfer by diffusion with a conduction heat transfer approximation. This made it possible to solve for the continuous temperature distribution throughout the capsule and surrounding gas. As with the capsule the redistribution times depended on the relative values of the thermal resistances of the vapor in the capsule and the transfer gas. With increasing vapor thermal resistance (increased concentration of 3He) redistributions times for hydrocarbon capsules were less than the minimum one-dimensional value of 27 minutes. Further analytical and experimental investigation of the thermal interaction between the capsule and hohlraum is recommended.