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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.
Iskender Atilla Reyhancan, Ayse Durusoy
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 174 | Number 2 | June 2013 | Pages 202-207
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE11-96
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In this study, the activation cross sections were, first, measured for the 144Sm(n,)141mNd reaction at six different neutron energies from 13.57 to 14.83 MeV. The fast neutrons were produced by using a neutron generator, through the 3H(2H,n)4He reaction. The cyclic activation technique was used as the irradiation and counting method. Induced gamma activities were measured using a high-resolution gamma-ray spectrometer equipped with a high-purity germanium detector. In the cross-section measurements, corrections were made regarding the effects of gamma-ray attenuation, dead time, fluctuation of neutron flux, and low-energy neutrons. The measured cross sections were compared with the results of model calculations (TALYS code).