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Fusion Science and Technology
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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.
R. W. Luo, A. L. Greenwood, A. Nikroo, C. Chen
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 55 | Number 4 | May 2009 | Pages 456-460
Technical Paper | Eighteenth Target Fabrication Specialists' Meeting | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A7426
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
One suggested approach to decreasing preheat of Laboratory for Laser Energetics cryotargets is to add a silicon dopant ~4 to 6 at.% to normal plasma polymer. As in the case of pure CH and CD shells used previously, the physical properties of these shells are of utmost importance to allow proper fielding for cryogenic shots. We have fabricated and characterized two types of Si-doped glow discharge polymer (GDP) capsules: single-layer Si-doped GDP shells (SiGDP) and double-layer Si-doped GDP/SCD shells (SiGDP/SCD).The Si-doped GDP shells with an ~870-m diameter and 5-m-thick walls were fabricated to meet the cryogenic direct laser fusion experiment requirements. Si-doped GDP shells with <0.25-m wall variation and 5% silicon dopant level were delivered. These cryogenic shells can survive a 1000-atm D2 or deuterium-tritium fill and cryogenic cooling without bursting or buckling. With an average buckle strength of 70 psi, a half-life of 12 s, and a D2 permeability at 20°C of 2.4 × 10-14 (mol × m/m2 × Pa × s), Si-doped GDP shells meet the criteria for cryogenic experiments. A possible drawback of the SiGDP layer is its rapid OH pickup due to exposure to air, which can increase the amount of infrared light absorbed in the shell wall as compared to D2 ice and possibly result in a poor ice uniformity during the cryogenic layering process. The absorption coefficient of the SiGDP at 3160 cm-1 measured by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy is ~48 cm-1 at 0.1 h to ~130 cm-1 at 167 h of air exposure.