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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.
N. Baglan, R. Le Meignen, G. Alanic, F. Pointurier
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 54 | Number 1 | July 2008 | Pages 243-247
Technical Paper | Environment and Safety | doi.org/10.13182/FST08-A1804
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Tritium exists in environmental samples in three forms: (i) Tissue Free Water Tritium (TFWT) and associated with the organic matter (OBT) under two forms; (ii) bound to oxygen and nitrogen atoms into the material (EOBT); (iii) bound to carbon atoms into the material (NEOBT). The developed analytical procedure allows obtaining accurate and reproducible information for the various tritium fraction determinations.Aiming to follow the distribution and the integration of NE-OBT in the vicinity of a nuclear research centre down to environmental level the analytical procedure was optimized to reduce possible contamination during critical stages such as the E-OBT elimination. Therefore, a new process using steam was designed and investigated leading to promising results.A broad study was initiated to study potential impact of tritium on tree leaves sampled in the vicinity of a nuclear research centre within a radius of about 20 km. Moreover both plane tree and oak leaves have been sampled to establish the NE-OBT mapping. Therefore, for several locations they were sampled twofold for comparison. Appropriate statistical tests allow assessing that the type of tree does not influence the NE-OBT integration in our experimental conditions.