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Fusion Energy
This division promotes the development and timely introduction of fusion energy as a sustainable energy source with favorable economic, environmental, and safety attributes. The division cooperates with other organizations on common issues of multidisciplinary fusion science and technology, conducts professional meetings, and disseminates technical information in support of these goals. Members focus on the assessment and resolution of critical developmental issues for practical fusion energy applications.
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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.-M. Travere, M.-H. Aumeunier, M. Joanny, T. Loarer, M. Firdaouss, E. Gauthier, V. Martin, V. Moncada, L. Marot, D. Chabaud, E. Humbert, J.-J. Fermé, C. Thellier
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 64 | Number 4 | November 2013 | Pages 735-740
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST13-A24093
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The ITER actively cooled tokamak is the next-generation fusion device that will allow study of the burning plasma over hundreds of seconds. ITER plasma-facing component (PFC) real-time protection will be mandatory to minimize operational risks as water leaks and critical heat flux lead to degradation of PFCs. The protection systems routinely used on Tore Supra (TS) or JET are based on infrared (IR) imaging systems controlling and monitoring the power load on the PFCs through surface temperature measurements. Thanks to TS expertise in actively cooled tokamak and long-pulse operation, three urgent research and development domains are discussed in this paper addressing the feasibility and the performance of the PFC protection function for the new and harsh environment of ITER: (a) the understanding of IR signals in a reflective environment using a physics-based light model simulation; (b) a PFC protection data processing architecture for event detection and identification; and (c) the feasibility, performance, and prototyping of the first optical component of the imaging systems - actively cooled, facing the plasma - which will impact the image quality and therefore PFC protection performance.