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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.
Yoshinari Oshimi, Mayu Ohki, Misato Nagano, Takuyo Yasumatsu, Masanori Hara, Satoshi Akamaru, Masato Nakayama, Miki Shoji
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 76 | Number 4 | May 2020 | Pages 583-588
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2020.1729294
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
For low-level tritium measurements using a liquid scintillation counter, scintillation vial selection is important. The applicability of polyethylene (PE) vials was studied. Three types of vials were tested: (1) 100-mL perfluoroalkoxy alkane (PFA) fluorine resin vials, (2) 100-mL PE vials, and (3) 145-mL PE vials. Ultima Gold LLT was the reference liquid scintillator in this study. The background counts for these vials were found to be 2.5 counts per minute. Tritiated water of 1.5 Bq‧mL−1 was employed as an internal standard to determine the counting efficiency. The counting efficiencies for the 100-mL PFA, 100-mL PE, and 145-mL PE vials were estimated to be 17%, 16%, and 13%, respectively. The lower limits of detection of these vials for a counting time of 100 min were 1.45 Bq‧L−1 for 100-mL PFA vials, 1.54 Bq‧L−1 for 100-mL PE vials, and 1.47 Bq‧L−1 for 145-mL PE vials. Thus, these vials demonstrate similar performances for tritium measurements.