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The Young Members Group works to encourage and enable all young professional members to be actively involved in the efforts and endeavors of the Society at all levels (Professional Divisions, ANS Governance, Local Sections, etc.) as they transition from the role of a student to the role of a professional. It sponsors non-technical workshops and meetings that provide professional development and networking opportunities for young professionals, collaborates with other Divisions and Groups in developing technical and non-technical content for topical and national meetings, encourages its members to participate in the activities of the Groups and Divisions that are closely related to their professional interests as well as in their local sections, introduces young members to the rules and governance structure of the Society, and nominates young professionals for awards and leadership opportunities available to members.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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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.
Motomasa Fuse, Naoshi Usui, Nobuyuki Ohta, Yoshiteru Sato, Ryosuke Shimizu, Hideyuki Hosokawa, Tsuyoshi Ito, Yoichi Wada
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 186 | Number 1 | April 2017 | Pages 38-47
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2016.1272385
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We have studied the effects of the oxidizing species on the cobalt radioactivity buildup behavior in boiling water reactors (BWRs) using both experimental results and existing literature data. The oxidizing species used to simulate the normal water chemistry (NWC) condition of BWRs were 200 ppb dissolved oxygen or 200 ppb hydrogen peroxide accompanied by 100 ppb dissolved oxygen. We found that the amount of cobalt deposited on stainless steel specimens in the oxygen-based water chemistry (200 ppb dissolved oxygen) was larger than that in the hydrogen peroxide–based water chemistry (200 ppb hydrogen peroxide and 100 ppb dissolved oxygen). The rate of cobalt deposition in the former chemistry was more than four times larger than that in the latter chemistry. This difference in cobalt deposition behavior can be attributed to two properties of oxides: surface morphology and composition. The film formed in the oxygen-based environment was less dense than the film formed in the hydrogen peroxide–based environment. Regarding the chemical constituents of the oxides, iron chromite is considered to be a major spinel-type oxide formed in oxygen-based environments. Furthermore, some literature data suggest that in hydrogen peroxide–based conditions, hematite-rich oxides are formed instead of magnetite-rich films, which are observed in oxygen-based conditions. These are likely reasons why the stainless steel specimens incorporate more cobalt radioactivity in the oxygen-based environment than in the hydrogen peroxide–based environment. The cobalt buildup behavior after switching from NWC to hydrogen water chemistry (HWC) is also affected by the oxidizing species used to simulate NWC; exposure to hydrogen peroxide–based NWC conditions tends to suppress the cobalt radioactivity buildup after switching from NWC to HWC compared to exposure to oxygen-based NWC.