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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.
Melvin H. Miles, Benjamin F. Bush, Joseph J. Lagowski
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 25 | Number 4 | July 1994 | Pages 478-486
Technical Paper | Nuclear Reaction in Solid | doi.org/10.13182/FST94-A30255
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Previous experiments showed that eight electrolysis gas samples collected during episodes of excess power production in two identical cells contained measurable amounts of 4He while six control samples gave no evidence for helium. However, the detection limit for helium could not be defined clearly. This study of helium diffusion into the Pyrex glass sample flasks establishes a minimum helium detection limit of 3 × 1013 atom/500 ml (3 ppb) for these experiments. New D2O and H2O control experiments involving helium measurements of electrolysis gas samples collected in metal flasks support this conclusion. This places the 4He production rate at 1011 to 1012 atom/s per watt of excess power, which is the correct magnitude for typical fusion reactions that yield helium as a product. Simultaneous evidence for excess power, helium production, and anomalous radiation was present in these experiments. Completely new experiments with more precise helium measurements are reported that again show simultaneous evidence for excess power, helium production, and anomalous radiation.