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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.
Giacomo G. M. Cojazzi, Guido Renda, Jor Shan Choi, Jim Hassberger
Nuclear Technology | Volume 179 | Number 1 | July 2012 | Pages 76-90
Technical Paper | Special Issue on Safeguards / Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT179-76
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Generation IV International Forum (GIF) Proliferation Resistance and Physical Protection (PR&PP) Working Group has developed a methodology for the PR&PP evaluation of advanced nuclear energy systems (NESs). A notional sodium-cooled fast neutron nuclear reactor system, named the Example Sodium Fast Reactor (ESFR), was used as a case study for the development and demonstration of the GIF PR&PP evaluation methodology. This paper presents some of the results of the application of the GIF PR&PP evaluation methodology to a misuse scenario involving the ESFR. The ESFR baseline design and two design variations are addressed. Rather than presenting a complete evaluation of all the possible misuse scenarios, the paper concentrates on methodological aspects and illustrates how a qualitative analysis following the GIF PR&PP evaluation methodology can generate traceable results of the considered design variations and provide useful feedback for both system and safeguards designers as well.