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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
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.
M. J. Quinlan, W. T. Shmayda, S. Lim, S. Salnikov, Z. Chambers, E. Pollock, W. U. Schröder
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 54 | Number 2 | August 2008 | Pages 519-522
Technical Paper | Materials Interactions | doi.org/10.13182/FST54-519
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Tritiated stainless steel was subjected to thermal desorption at various temperatures, different temperature profiles, and in the presence of different helium carrier gas additives. In all cases the identities of the desorbing tritiated species were characterized as either watersoluble or insoluble. The samples were found to contain 1.1 mCi±0.4 mCi. Approximately ninety-five percent of this activity was released in molecular water-soluble form. Additives of H2O or H2O2 to dry helium carrier gas increase the desorption rate and lower the maximum temperature to which the sample must be heated, in order to remove the bulk of the tritium. The measurements validate a method of decontamination of tritiated steel and suggest a technique that can be used to further explore the mechanisms of desorption from tritiated metals.
