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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.
D. E. Driemeyer
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 4 | Number 2 | September 1983 | Pages 1183-1188
Neutronics and Shielding | doi.org/10.13182/FST83-A23019
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Neutron activation due to photoneutron production in the lead shields proposed to protect the EBT-P superconducting coils from excessive x-ray heating was investigated. The photoneutron flux distribution in various EBT-P structural components was calcualted for typical upgrade operating conditions using a standard two-dimensional transport model (TWOTRAN). Activity levels were then evaluated for major structural materials using activation cross sections tabulated in the GAMMON library. Activation dose rates in the device enclosure following several days of 8h/day upgrade (90GHz) operation were found to be ∼6 mrem/h, decaying to <0.25 mrem/h in ∼3 days. This requires radition monitoring of all personnel entering the device enclosure during this time, but should not generally restrict “hands on” access to the device. There is thus no strong motivation to replace lead with another shield material; however, it may be desirable to borate the enclosure walls in order to reduce the effect which impurities might have on activity levels.