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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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No impact from Savannah River radioactive wasps
The news is abuzz with recent news stories about four radioactive wasp nests found at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The site has been undergoing cleanup operations since the 1990s related to the production of plutonium and tritium for defense purposes during the Cold War. Cleanup activities are expected to continue into the 2060s.
Shinya Miyahara, Kazuo Haga, Yoshiaki Himeno
Nuclear Technology | Volume 97 | Number 2 | February 1992 | Pages 212-226
Technical Paper | Nuclear Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT92-A34617
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A series of tests is conducted to study the mechanical release behavior of sodium aerosols containing nonvolatile fission products during a sodium-concrete reaction in which release behavior due to hydrodynamic breakup of the hydrogen bubble is predominant at the sodium pool surface. In the tests, nonradioactive materials, namely, strontium oxide, europium oxide, and ruthenium particles, whose sizes range from a few microns to several tens of microns, are used as nonvolatile fission product simulants. The following results are obtained: 1. The sodium aerosol release rate during the sodium-concrete reaction is larger than that of natural evaporation. The difference, however, becomes smaller with increasing sodium temperature: nearly ten times smaller at 400°C and three times at 700°C. 2. The retention factors for the nonvolatile materials in the sodium pool increase to the range of 0.5 to 104 with an increase in the sodium temperature from 400 to 700° C.