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Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
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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.
Sergey S. Anan'ev, Alexander V. Spitsyn, Boris V. Kuteev, Pavel N. Shirnin, Nikolay T. Kazakovsky, Dmitry I. Cherkez
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 67 | Number 2 | March 2015 | Pages 241-244
Proceedings of TRITIUM 2013 | doi.org/10.13182/FST14-T1
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A concept of DT-fusion neutron source (FNS) with the neutron yield higher than 1018 neutrons per second is under designe in Russia. Such a FNS is of interest for many applications: (i) basic and applied research (neutron scattering, etc); (ii) testing the structural materials for fusion reactors; (iii) control of sub-critical nuclear systems and (iv) nuclear waste processing (including transmutation of minor actinides). This paper describes of fuel cycle concept of a compact fusion neutron source based on a small spherical tokamak (FNS-ST) with a MW range of DT fusion power and considers the key physics issues of this device. The major and minor radii are ∼0.5 and ∼0.3m, magnetic field ∼1.5 T, heating power less than 15MW and plasma current 1–2 MA. The system provides the fuel mixture with equal fractions of D and T (D:T = 1:1) for all FNS technology systems.