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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.
J. E. Klein, J. S. Hölder
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 54 | Number 2 | August 2008 | Pages 611-614
Technical Paper | Process Applications | doi.org/10.13182/FST08-A1889
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Bench scale (1 to 6 gram) methane cracking tests have been performed on a variety of pure elements, some alloys, and SAES® commercial getters St 101, St 198, St 707, St 737, and St 909 to determine methane cracking performance (MCP) of 5% methane in a helium carrier at 700°C, 101.3 kPa (760 torr) with a 10 sccm feed. The MCP was almost absent from some materials tested while others showed varying degrees of MCP. Re, Cr, V, Gd, and Mo powders had good MCP, but limited capacities. Nickel supported on kieselguhr (Ni/k), a Zr-Ni alloy, and the SAES® getters had good MCP in a helium carrier. The MCP of these same materials was suppressed in a hydrogen carrier stream and the MCP of the Zr-based materials was reduced by nitride formation when tested with a nitrogen carrier gas.