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Nuclear Installations Safety
Devoted specifically to the safety of nuclear installations and the health and safety of the public, this division seeks a better understanding of the role of safety in the design, construction and operation of nuclear installation facilities. The division also promotes engineering and scientific technology advancement associated with the safety of such facilities.
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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.
Lara M. Pierpoint
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 186 | Number 1 | April 2017 | Pages 66-82
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2016.1272386
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Nuclear fuel cycle studies have provided a wealth of information on the potential impacts of advanced recycling systems. Deciding on fuel cycle implementation pathways, however, requires synthesizing volumes of data and navigating trade-offs between fuel cycle options. This research presents a framework intended to aid fuel cycle decision makers by focusing on the cost reduction/waste mitigation trade-off as a lens for choosing a near-term strategy. The framework consists of a fuel cycle simulation coupled to a decision tree model that maps evolution scenarios. System scenarios are constructed by considering the technological options for fuel cycle evolution and key uncertainties expected to affect the desirability of those options. For this study, the once-through fuel cycle is compared to a self-sustaining fast reactor (FR) fuel cycle. Scenarios are compared using a value function that incorporates cost and waste metrics. The results indicate that uranium costs and the attainable level of reprocessing efficiency may not significantly impact the suite of desirable decisions. On the other hand, the pattern and timing of nuclear builds as well as the extent to which FRs provide true waste mitigation more significantly impact the attractiveness of closing the fuel cycle.