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2024 ANS Annual Conference
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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.
Sang Ho Kim, Seong-Wan Hong, Rae-Joon Park
Nuclear Technology | Volume 207 | Number 10 | October 2021 | Pages 1615-1632
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2020.1820827
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A steam explosion can occur when molten corium falls from the reactor vessel into the water in the reactor cavity. While various research studies have been conducted on steam explosions following the free fall of molten corium in air before entering the water, steam explosions following submerged corium discharge under the ex-vessel cooling condition have received relatively little analysis. The aim of this paper is to compare the progress and consequences of a steam explosion in experiments and simulations for the partially flooded cavity and ex-vessel cooling conditions. Three steam explosion tests carried out in the TROI (Test for Real cOrium Interaction with water) experimental facility were simulated by the TEXAS-V code. Experimental tests were first modeled, followed by a comparison of the experimental and simulation results. The effect of the molten corium mass involved in the steam explosion under water at the moment of triggering on the strength of the explosion was higher than that of the corium composition in the tests and simulations for the condition of a partially flooded cavity. In the test and simulations of different corium injection modes to the water, the maximum pressure and impulse of the steam explosion appeared in the partially flooded cavity condition. In the simulations for the partially flooded cavity condition, the mass of the molten corium fragmented by Rayleigh-Taylor instability (RTI) was higher than that fragmented by Kelvin-Helmholtz instability (KHI). Modeling of KHI fragmentation caused solidification of the fragmented corium particles, and the impulses reduced accordingly. In the simulations for the ex-vessel cooling condition, as melt jet breakup did not occur before the triggering time, simulations with only RTI fragmentation underestimated the impulse of the steam explosion. Otherwise, modeling of KHI fragmentation increased the impulse of the steam explosion due to fragmentation on the side of the corium jet. Steam explosion simulations in the ex-vessel cooling condition require more detailed modeling of the melt jet and premixing area, as well as variable adjustment for the fragmentation by KHI.