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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.
Tim D. Bohm, Andrew Davis, Moataz S. Harb, Edward P. Marriott, Paul P. H. Wilson
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 75 | Number 6 | August 2019 | Pages 429-437
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2019.1600930
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The use of a liquid-metal (LM) plasma-facing component (LM-PFC) in fusion reactor designs has some advantages as well as some disadvantages as compared to traditional designs that use a solid plasma-facing wall. Neutronics analysis of these potential LM-PFC concepts is important in order to ensure that radiation limits are met and that system performance meets expectations.
A three-dimensional (3-D) neutronics analysis parametric study considering four LM first-wall (FW) candidates, (PbLi, Li, Sn, and SnLi) was performed with a thin (2.51-cm) LM-PFC design. The 3-D neutronics study used a fusion reactor based on the Fusion Energy Systems Study (FESS) Fusion Nuclear Science Facility (FNSF) (FESS-FNSF) that served as the baseline for comparison. FESS-FNSF is a deuterium-tritium–fueled tokamak with 518 MW of fusion power. A partially homogenized 3-D computer-aided-design model of the LM-PFC FNSF design was analyzed using the DAG-MCNP5 transport code.
The results show that all candidate LM designs are acceptable with 4% to 13% increases in the tritium breeding ratio compared to the baseline case. The peak displacements per atom at the FW decrease 2% to 15%. For all four LM designs examined, the magnet heating and fast neutron fluence are well below acceptable limits. Overall, the Li LM design is the best candidate from a neutronics perspective.