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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.
Bruno M. Van Wonterghem, Sandra J. Brereton, Robert F. Burr, Peg Folta, Diane L. Hardy, Nicholas N. Jize, Thomas R. Kohut, Terry A. Land, Bernard T. Merritt
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 69 | Number 1 | January-February 2016 | Pages 452-469
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST15-118
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is a high-energy-density-physics, experimental user facility that focuses up to 1.8 MJ of UV light in 192 laser beams onto a mm-sized target at the center of a target chamber. This paper describes how we conduct experimental shots on the NIF. We review processes and tools used to facilitate experiment planning and operations. Safety and radiological aspects of NIF’s operations are discussed. We also describe efforts to continuously improve operational efficiency and further increase shot rate.