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Materials Science & Technology
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
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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. Melintescu, D. Galeriu, S. Diabaté, S. Strack
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 67 | Number 3 | April 2015 | Pages 479-482
Proceedings of TRITIUM 2013 | doi.org/10.13182/FST14-T59
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Some nuclear facilities have large tritium loads and subsequent environmental emissions and consequently, the radiological impact assessment is mandatory. In case of the unplanned (potential) accidents there are extremely large uncertainties of the model predictions for crop contamination and dose due to many factors affecting the Organically Bound Tritium (OBT) dynamics in crops. A full mechanistic model is difficult to develop due to the complexity of the processes involved in tritium transfer and the environmental conditions. The preparatory steps for a robust model are discussed in the present study, considering the role of the dry matter and photosynthesis contributing to the OBT dynamics in crops.
