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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.
H. T. Bach, R. B. Schwarz, D. G. Tuggle
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 48 | Number 1 | July-August 2005 | Pages 545-550
Technical Paper | Tritium Science and Technology - Materials Interaction and Permeation | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A984
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We have used resonant ultrasound spectroscopy to measure the three independent elastic constants of Pd-H, Pd-D, and Pd-T single crystal at 300K as a function of hydrogen, deuterium, and tritium concentration, respectively. The addition of interstitial H (D, or T) atoms, located at (0,½,0) in the fcc Pd lattice, affects all three elastic constants C', C44, and B. In the mixed (+) phase, and with increasing H isotope, the shear modulus C' shows an abnormal softening whereas C44 and B do not. This is explained in terms of Zener-type an elastic relaxations affecting the shape of the hydride phases in the coherent(+) two-phase mixture In the single -phase, C' shows a strong isotope dependence whereas C44 and B show none. This behavior is explained in terms of differences in the excitation of optical phonons. In Pd-T, 3He is produced by the radioactive decay of tritium. We have measured in situ the swelling and the change in the elastic constants in Pd-T as a function of aging time. Aging (3He formation) affects all three elastic constants. These measurements are being used to understand the early stages of 3H-3He cluster formation in aged Pd-T crystal.