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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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.
Hongsuk Chung, Jongchul Park, Daeseo Koo, Hyun-Goo Kang, Min Ho Chang, Sei-Hun Yun, Seungyon Cho, Ki Jung Jung, Seungwoo Paek
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 68 | Number 2 | September 2015 | Pages 368-372
Technical Paper | Proceedings of TOFE-2014 | doi.org/10.13182/FST14-944
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A tritium plant for nuclear fusion power plants consists of an SDS (Storage and Delivery System), an ISS (Hydrogen Isotope Separation System), a TEP (Tokamak Exhaust Processing system), and an ANS (tritium plant Analytical System). Korea has been developing an SDS. The main purpose of this tritium storage and delivery system is to store and supply the D-T gas needed for DT plasma operation and to provide the necessary infrastructure for short- and long-term storage of large amounts of tritium. We have been developing tritium storage beds for the SDS.
The primary role of the metal hydride beds in the SDS is to store and supply D-T fuel during DT plasma operation. ZrCo and depleted uranium (DU) have been extensively studied. Compared to the use of ZrCo, which is disproportionate at temperatures of higher than 350°C, DU hydride can be heated up to very high temperatures sufficient to pump hydrogen isotopes without using gas compressors. Our experimental apparatus used to test the experimental DU bed consists of a tank that stores and measures the hydrogen, and a DU bed used for the hydriding/dehydriding of hydrogen. Our DU bed is a horizontal double-cylinder type with sintered metal filters. The bed is composed of primary and secondary vessels. The primary vessel contains a DU, and a vacuum layer is formed between the primary and secondary vessels. In this study, we present our recent experimental results on the direct delivery of hydrogen isotopes from a DU hydride bed. We also present the effect of the initial bed temperature and impurity gas on the hydriding rates.