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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.
N. K. Hicks, W. Suttrop, K. Behler, M. García-Muñoz, L. Giannone, M. Maraschek, G. Raupp, M. Reich, A. C. C. Sips, J. Stober, W. Treutterer, F. Volpe, Asdex Upgrade Team, S. Cirant, G. D'Antona
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 57 | Number 1 | January 2010 | Pages 1-9
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST57-1-1
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The ASDEX Upgrade tokamak employs a 60-channel electron cyclotron emission (ECE) radiometer diagnostic for the measurement of radial electron temperature profiles of the plasma. The data acquisition (DAQ) portion of the system has now been upgraded to sample at 1 to 2 MHz, and accordingly, electron temperature fluctuations from 500 kHz to 1 MHz may be measured. The high spatial resolution of [approximately]1 cm and flexible magnetic field coverage from 1.5 to 3.0 T remain unchanged. The system can now provide observations of plasma phenomena on the magnetohydrodynamic timescale, such as neoclassical tearing modes (NTMs) and toroidal Alfvén eigenmodes (TAEs). The upgraded and existing DAQ systems may be run in parallel for comparison, and some of the first plasma measurements using the two systems together are presented, along with an example of localization of [approximately]120-kHz TAEs in the fast ECE data. A principal planned application of the upgraded radiometer is integration into a real-time NTM stabilization loop using targeted deposition of electron cyclotron resonance heating (ECRH) or electron cyclotron current drive. For this loop, it is necessary to determine the locations of the NTM and ECRH deposition using ECE measurements. The NTM location is determined via correlation between ECE and Mirnov coil measurements, and results of this technique for (2,1) and (3,2) NTMs are presented. ECRH deposition is located by observing the modulation signature of the injected ECRH power in ECE measurements. Several additional applications enabled by the upgraded radiometer are also discussed.