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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.
V.E. Moiseenko
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 27 | Number 3 | April 1995 | Pages 547-550
New Trends and Advanced Concepts | doi.org/10.13182/FST95-A11962960
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
D-T fusion in a DRACON with one hot (D or T) ion component is considered. It is supposed that the power from external source (neutral beam injection or ICRF heating) is deposited to hot ions near the center of DRACON mirror part. Because the energy deposition is anisotropic in the velocity space, the anisotropy of hot ions is substantial both for neutron source and reactor plasmas. This results in the following:–hot ions arc trapped mainly in the DRACON mirror part where good confinement can be expected. Therefore, the main channel of hot component energy loss is Coulomb collisions with the cold background plasma.–the pressure of hot ions substantially drops in the CRELs (stellarator parts of DRACON). The contribution of hot ions to Phirsh-Schluter current falls what facilitate the satisfaction of the beta-limit condition.–fusion output is localized in the DRACON mirror parts where confining magnetic field is not so high and more space for fusion energy utilizing devices is available. Reduced neutron flux in CRELs facilitates the solution of many technical problems there. In addition, localization of neutron flux leads to substantial reduction of external power required for the DRACON fusion neutron source.
hot ions arc trapped mainly in the DRACON mirror part where good confinement can be expected. Therefore, the main channel of hot component energy loss is Coulomb collisions with the cold background plasma.
the pressure of hot ions substantially drops in the CRELs (stellarator parts of DRACON). The contribution of hot ions to Phirsh-Schluter current falls what facilitate the satisfaction of the beta-limit condition.
fusion output is localized in the DRACON mirror parts where confining magnetic field is not so high and more space for fusion energy utilizing devices is available. Reduced neutron flux in CRELs facilitates the solution of many technical problems there. In addition, localization of neutron flux leads to substantial reduction of external power required for the DRACON fusion neutron source.
The scenarios for the DRACON neutron source as well as for the DRACON fusion reactor arc analyzed. The usage of hot ion distribution anisotropy effects, which arc strong for neutron source schemes and not so strong but sufficient for the fusion reactor one, results in that the scenarios have obvious advantages in comparison with analogous ones based on other confinement devices.