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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.
K. I. Thomassen
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 4 | Number 2 | September 1983 | Pages 62-66
U.S. Next-Generation Tokamak and Tandem Mirror Programs | doi.org/10.13182/FST83-A22846
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
There are two main thrusts to the tandem mirror program at the present time. One is to gather the experimental data base to verify the axicell thermal barrier concept and the other to improve the end plugs for tandems. With such improvements one might approach the ideal fusion reactor, a simple solenoid of modular elements whose ends are but a modest perturbation on the configuration from both a cost and technological view point. Progress toward these two goals is discussed here, and the directions to be taken in the immediate future are described.