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GAO: Clarification of HLW definition could save DOE billions
A clearer definition of what constitutes high-level radioactive waste could save the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management “tens of billions of dollars” in waste management costs and accelerate its cleanup schedule by decades, according to a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
DOE-EM’s efforts to manage waste resulting from legacy spent nuclear fuel reprocessing have been hindered for decades by the ambiguity of the statutory definition of HLW as laid out in the Atomic Energy Act and Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the report states. While admitting that the DOE has taken steps to overcome this ambiguity, the GAO says that the department has not fully evaluated all available opportunities to treat and dispose of waste more economically as either transuranic or low-level radioactive waste.
Koichi Uozumi, Kenji Fujihata, Takeshi Tsukada
Nuclear Technology | Volume 203 | Number 3 | September 2018 | Pages 261-271
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1454807
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A parameter-based survey of the synthesis conditions by a so-called pressureless consolidation method to fabricate glass-bonded sodalite waste form for stabilizing fission products generated in pyrometallurgical reprocessing of spent metal fuel was performed. The maximum temperature, the heating duration at the maximum temperature, the glass fraction in the initial material, and the weight load used for pressing the material were chosen as the variable parameters. Accordingly, modified conditions to reduce the maximum temperature and increase the weight load were selected for reducing the volatilized-salt ratio during the heating and the free-salt ratio in the product. By fabricating a simulated waste under the modified conditions, the effect of changing the conditions was confirmed. Leaching tests in pure water using the consolidated products fabricated under both reference and modified conditions showed that the stability of the products was not significantly deteriorated by modifying the heating conditions.