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Division Spotlight
Robotics & Remote Systems
The Mission of the Robotics and Remote Systems Division is to promote the development and application of immersive simulation, robotics, and remote systems for hazardous environments for the purpose of reducing hazardous exposure to individuals, reducing environmental hazards and reducing the cost of performing work.
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.
Keisuke Sasaki, Tooru Shibutani, Takahiro Itou, Takahiro Tadokoro, Shuichi Hatakeyama (Hitachi)
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 573-580
After the serious accident happened in March, 2011 at Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant, various countermeasures are required and have been carried out. Regarding the radiation monitoring, the reinforced environmental resistance, additional monitoring equipment for the additional facilities and the diversity of monitoring principle with the existing monitoring devices are the scope of improvement. Hitachi, Ltd. and Hitachi-GE have been developing a fiber optic radiation monitor using a neodymium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet (Nd:YAG) crystal and Eu3+ doped gadolinium tantalate (GdTaO4:Eu) crystal. Prototype monitors have been developed and their performance evaluation was carried out. As a result of the evaluation, fiber optic radiation monitors show very good characteristics for a nuclear power plant use. Therefore, we advanced a study about system constitution applying these detectors. In particular, system constitution plan and characteristics are listed in this paper in the case of CAMS, ARMS and monitoring post. Finally, the future prospects of the optic fiber radiation monitor are mentioned.
