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Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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.
Philipp Herold, Michael Jobmann (DBE Technology GmbH)
Proceedings | 16th International High-Level Radioactive Waste Management Conference (IHLRWM 2017) | Charlotte, NC, April 9-13, 2017 | Pages 758-766
Within the framework of the R&D project ANSICHT (Safety Assessment Methodology for a German High-level Waste Repository in Clay Formations), DBE TECHNOLOGY GmbH, BGR, and GRS developed an integrated methodological approach on how to demonstrate the safety of a HLW repository in claystone in Germany. One challenging aspect of this approach was the design of a repository concept for the two known potential host rock formations; huge Jurassic claystone layers in the northern part of Germany and thinner but well-known claystone layers in the South, also known as Opalinus Clay. For the northern reference geology, the disposal of unshielded canisters in vertical boreholes was designed as preferred emplacement concept. For the Opalinus Clay, drift disposal of shielded POLLUX® casks was identified as the most suitable emplacement concept. In addition, the ERNESTA study (Development of Technical Concepts for the Retrieval of Waste Containers with Heat-generating Waste and Spent Fuel from Repositories in Salt and Clay Formations) was initiated to investigate in parallel how to fulfil the requirement for retrievability in both concepts. In Germany, retrievability is a design criterion and requirement for licensing stipulated by the “Safety Requirements Governing the Final Disposal of Heat-Generating Radioactive Waste”, established in 2010.