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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.
Ph. Guetat, C. Boyer, A. Tognelli, J. M. Duda
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 60 | Number 4 | November 2011 | Pages 1238-1243
Environmental and Organically Bound Tritium | Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Tritium Science and Technology (Part 2) | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A12654
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The objective of this document is to describe the behavior of tritium in the environment from the survey data of the site of a French research centre.Since the late 60's, the nuclear site of Valduc, has been discharging tritium gas and tritiated water to the atmosphere. Those discharges have lead to a transfer to the nearby groundwater and rivers. A balance of the tritium migrating through the hydrogeological system is presented for the 1969-2009 period.Surface survey data bring also quite a lot of information about transfers by the air pathway. This concerns the different compartments: air, rain, soil, vegetable and animals. Ratios between the different compartment concentration show that air-leaves transfer is important, that rain and air deposition are of the same order of magnitude, and that a relatively good equilibrium exist between free and organic material water of the vegetable.Some outdoor experiments confirm, in agreement with literature, the level of incorporation in organic materials.Outside the centre, water always remained below the present WHO limit of quality for drinkable water. Radiological impact has been assessed and is presently less than 1 Sv.y-1 for individual of the nearby population.Tritium appears to be a very good indicator of the site specific characteristics.