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The division was organized to promote the advancement of knowledge of the use of particle accelerator technologies for nuclear and other applications. It focuses on production of neutrons and other particles, utilization of these particles for scientific or industrial purposes, such as the production or destruction of radionuclides significant to energy, medicine, defense or other endeavors, as well as imaging and diagnostics.
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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.
Simon Niemes, Michael Sturm, Robert Michling, Beate Bornschein
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 67 | Number 3 | April 2015 | Pages 507-510
Proceedings of TRITIUM 2013 | doi.org/10.13182/FST14-T66
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The β-ray induced X-ray spectrometry (BIXS) is a promising technique to monitor the tritium concentration in a fuel cycle of a fusion reactor. For in-situ measurements of high level tritiated water by bremsstrahlung counting, the characteristics of a low-noise silicon drift detector (SDD) have been examined at the Tritium Laboratory Karlsruhe (TLK). In static measurements with constant sample volume and tritium concentration, the bremsstrahlung spectra of tritiated water samples in a concentration range of 0.02 to 15 MBq/ml have been observed. The volume has been kept constant at 5 cm3. The observed spectra are well above the noise threshold. In addition to X-rays induced by β-rays, the spectra feature X-ray fluorescence peaks of the surrounding materials. No indications of memory effects have been observed. A linear relation between the X-ray intensity and the tritium concentration was obtained and the lower detection limit of the setup has been determined to 1 MBq ml-1, assessed by the Currie criterion. In addition, the spectra obtained experimentally could be reproduced with high agreement by Monte-Carlo simulations using the Geant4-toolkit. It was found that the present detection system is applicable to non-invasive measurements of high-level tritiated water and the SDD is a convenient tool to detect the low energy bremsstrahlung X-rays.