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Accelerator Applications
The division was organized to promote the advancement of knowledge of the use of particle accelerator technologies for nuclear and other applications. It focuses on production of neutrons and other particles, utilization of these particles for scientific or industrial purposes, such as the production or destruction of radionuclides significant to energy, medicine, defense or other endeavors, as well as imaging and diagnostics.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
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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.
Vaclav Dostal, Pavel Hejzlar, Michael J. Driscoll
Nuclear Technology | Volume 154 | Number 3 | June 2006 | Pages 283-301
Technical Paper | Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT06-A3734
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper consists of three parts. The first part presents a mostly thermodynamic comparison of the supercritical carbon dioxide (S-CO2) cycle to helium Brayton, superheated steam, and supercritical steam cycles. Issues that contribute to plant cost are discussed. The second part presents an economic comparison of a gas-cooled reactor coupled to S-CO2 direct, helium Brayton direct, and superheated steam indirect cycles. The results indicate savings of up to 30% if the steam indirect cycle is replaced with the direct S-CO2 cycle. Compared to the helium direct cycle, the savings can reach 15%. The third part describes the optimization and potential of the indirect S-CO2 cycle and the effect of reheating. The indirect cycles of helium to S-CO2 and lead bismuth to S-CO2 are studied to assess the performance of gas-to-gas and liquid metal or liquid salt indirect cycles, respectively. It is shown that although the indirect cycle of helium to S-CO2 is feasible, it poses challenges in the intermediate heat exchanger design and suffers efficiency losses due to the large power consumption of the main circulators. Gas indirect cycles are well suited for liquid metal or liquid salt reactors. Further, the study indicates that employing reheat is economically unattractive for the indirect cycle of helium to S-CO2 because of efficiency reduction from pressure losses in reheaters and interconnecting ducting and additional capital cost. A similar conclusion was also reached for the indirect cycles of liquid metal or liquid salt to S-CO2 even though pumping power is very small. This is because of the additional cost of an intermediate liquid metal (or liquid salt) loop, which needs to be added since it is not possible to place all heat exchangers for reheat inside the reactor vessel.