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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.
N. Baglan, S. B. Kim, C. Cossonnet, I. W. Croudace, M. Fournier, D. Galeriu, P. E. Warwick, N. Momoshima, E. Ansoborlo
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 67 | Number 2 | March 2015 | Pages 250-253
Proceedings of TRITIUM 2013 | doi.org/10.13182/FST14-T3
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Many methods allow analysing the various forms of tritium in environmental samples; however, there are no published standard methods for measuring organically bound tritium (OBT). Furthermore, there are no certified reference materials of OBT for environmental samples. In environmental samples (plants and animals), the measurement of the various tritium fractions requires extraction of the free water, often through freeze drying processes. Combustion of the dry sample is then carried out to recover organically bound tritium in the combustion water. By measuring these water fractions, the tissue-free water tritium (TFWT) and the OBT concentration can be assessed. However, these techniques are tricky and sometimes not available in all monitoring labs. Indeed, most of them measure only the TFWT fraction in food samples, such as wine or milk. Researches to promote the use of validated procedures are on-going in several countries. However, for almost all comparison exercise organisers it is difficult on a yearly basis to provide the samples and to realise the statistical treatment of the results. Therefore, to improve OBT analytical skills, an international task group devoted to the improvement of OBT analytical procedures was created to overcome these limitations. For the first exercise about 20 labs from 8 countries were registered. The samples, specially-prepared potatoes, were provided in March 2013 to each participant. Technical information and results from this first exercise are discussed here for all the labs which have realised the five replicates necessary to allow a reliable statistical treatment. From this work an optimised procedure can start to be developed to deal with OBT analysis and will guide subsequent planned OBT trials by the international group.