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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.
B. Vezzoni et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 61 | Number 1 | January 2012 | Pages 155-160
Fission | Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Emerging Nuclear Energy Systems | doi.org/10.13182/FST12-A13413
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Traditionally the analysis of the evolution of severe core disruptive accidents (CDA) is broken down into different phases. This is mainly done for a better focussing on the key phenomena of the accident phase and also allows the application of specific codes for the analysis. In the current paper we mainly deal with the initiating phase and the transition phase of an accident as the ULOF (unprotected loss of flow). The key phenomenon of the initiating phase is the start of boiling and the development of voiding; key phenomena of the transition phase are the progression of core melting and the occurence of recriticalities by fuel compaction. The first level of optimizing safety is oriented to the initiating phase by reducing the positive void worth in order to avoid that a ULOF accident would enter a severe development.If accident prevention is not achieved the transition phase, characterized by a progressive core degradation leading to the occurrence of recriticalities, can be mitigated by dedicated features that enhance and guarantee a sufficient and timely fuel discharge - e.g. by a controlled material relocation (CMR) - and influence and `brake'; the recriticality path.In the paper both phases are analyzed. The results presented are in agreement with the activities performed within the European Collaborative CP-ESFR project.