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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.
Brian J. Egle, John F. Santarius, Gerald L. Kulcinski
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 52 | Number 4 | November 2007 | Pages 1110-1113
Technical Paper | Nonelectric Applications | doi.org/10.13182/FST07-A1646
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The performance of a new Inertial Electrostatic Confinement (IEC) fusion device using a cylindrical anode and two different cathode geometries, spherical and cylindrical, was compared to an existing IEC device with two different sized configurations of spherical anodes and cathodes. Experimental data was generated at -30 to -150 kilovolts, 30 milliamps steady-state, and 0.3 Pascal of Deuterium (D) and/or Helium-3 (3He). The best neutron rate achieved by the new device in a D environment was 2.7 × 107 neutrons per second at 145 kV and 35 mA. In a D-3He environment, the best proton rate achieved was 2.0 × 107 protons per second at 130 kV and 30 mA. Both the D-D neutron rate and the D-3He proton rate were approximately 40% lower than the larger volume existing IEC device.