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Division Spotlight
Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
Meeting Spotlight
2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
Standards Program
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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Latest News
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.
Charles Forsberg
Nuclear Technology | Volume 189 | Number 1 | January 2015 | Pages 63-70
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-137
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Advances in laser enrichment may enable relatively low-cost plutonium isotopic separation creating a new unexplored dimension in fuel cycle options. This may have large impacts on light water reactor (LWR) closed fuel cycles and waste management. If 240Pu is removed before recycling plutonium as mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel, it would dramatically reduce the buildup of higher plutonium isotopes, americium, and curium. Plutonium-240 is a fertile material and thus can be replaced by 238U. Eliminating the higher plutonium isotopes in MOX fuel increases the Doppler feedback, simplifies reactor control, and allows infinite recycle of MOX plutonium in LWRs. Reducing production of 241Pu by removal of 240Pu reduces production of 241Am—the primary heat generator in spent nuclear fuel after several decades. Reducing heat-generating 241Am would reduce repository size, cost, and waste toxicity. Avoiding 241Am avoids its decay product 237Np, a nuclide that partly controls long-term oxidizing repository performance. The 240Pu could be added to the high-level waste for disposal. Some of these benefits also apply to plutonium recycled into fast reactors. However, the benefits are fewer because in a fast neutron spectrum, 240Pu is both a fissile material and a fertile material. There would be incentives to separate 242Pu and dispose of it as a waste.