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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.
G. M. Fuller, B. A. Cramer, J. R. Haines, J. Kirchner, B. A. Engholm, M. Seki
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 4 | Number 2 | September 1983 | Pages 1089-1094
Blanket and First Wall Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST83-A23003
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Major design goals for FED-R are the achievement of (1) a high level of neutron exposure of the test modules and (2) a capability for rapid changeout of test modules. 1,2 A major factor in rapid changeout is perceived to be the location of the vacuum boundary. In FED-R this boundary was set at the first wall so that module changeout did not require the plasma chamber to be brought up to atmosphere. Efforts to realize these goals in the design resulted in a neutronically thin outboard wall for the vacuum vessel constructed of 316 stainless steel (SS) with helium as a coolant. A normalized 14-MeV neutron transmission of 0.82 is expected, with an inlet pressure of 2 MPa and a pumping power requirement of 8.7 MW. Other options considered in the study were aluminum as a wall material and water and sodium potassium (NaK) as coolants.
