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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.
A. Shrivastava, M. Makwana, P. Chaudhuri, E. Rajendrakumar
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 65 | Number 2 | March-April 2014 | Pages 319-324
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST13-658
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In fusion DEMO reactors, the blanket requires lithium-containing ceramics as the tritium breeder material. Lithium metatitanate (Li2TiO3) is being considered as a promising tritium breeding material for thermonuclear fusion reactors because of its reasonable lithium atom density, prominent tritium release rate at low temperatures, low activation characteristics, low thermal expansion coefficient, high thermal conductivity, etc. Li2TiO3 will be used in the Indian Lead-Lithium–Cooled Ceramic Breeder concept to be tested in ITER. Li2TiO3 powder has been synthesized by the solution-combustion technique using a less expensive precursor of titanium, i.e., titanium dioxide (TiO2), at Institute for Plasma Research. Titanium oxynitrate [TiO(NO3)2] and lithium carbonate (Li2CO3) with citric acid fuel are used as the raw materials. The combustion reaction was carried out at citrate-to-metal ratios of 0.8 to 1.5, as well as for various pH values ranging from 1 to 5. Citric acid was used as a fuel material for the reaction. Calcination of the powder was carried out at 600°C. The powders were characterized for phase purity, grain size, and surface area using X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and a Brunauer-Emmett-Teller surface area analyzer. Finally, Li2TiO3 pebbles were prepared by extrusion followed by spheronization with a diameter range from 1 to 1.5 mm. The details of the powder systemization, pebble formation, and their various characterizations are discussed in this paper.