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DNFSB spots possible bottleneck in Hanford’s waste vitrification
Workers change out spent 27,000-pound TSCR filter columns and place them on a nearby storage pad during a planned outage in 2023. (Photo: DOE)
While the Department of Energy recently celebrated the beginning of hot commissioning of the Hanford Site’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP), which has begun immobilizing the site’s radioactive tank waste in glass through vitrification, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board has reported a possible bottleneck in waste processing. According to the DNFSB, unless current systems run efficiently, the issue could result in the interruption of operations at the WTP’s Low-Activity Waste Facility, where waste vitrification takes place.
During operations, the LAW Facility will process an average of 5,300 gallons of tank waste per day, according to Bechtel, the contractor leading design, construction, and commissioning of the WTP. That waste is piped to the facility after being treated by Hanford’s Tanks Side Cesium Removal (TSCR) system, which filters undissolved solid material and removes cesium from liquid waste.
According to a November 7 activity report by the DNFSB, the TSCR system may not be able to produce waste feed fast enough to keep up with the LAW Facility’s vitrification rate.
Milton Levenson was a member of the American Nuclear Society (ANS) for over 50 years and an ANS Fellow, the highest membership grade of the Society. He was elected president in 1983 making him the 29th president of ANS.
Levenson was born on January 4, 1922. He had a long and successful 73 years in the industry. His work experience began at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 1944, with most of it in nuclear reactor safety and fuel processing.
He served as a research engineer at Oak Ridge from 1944 to 1948; during part of that time (1944-1946) he was also in the U.S. Army. In 1948, he moved to Illinois to work at Argonne National Laboratory, where he retired as associate laboratory director in 1973.
Levenson then moved to the Electric Power Research Institute, Palo Alto, California, where he served as the first director of the nuclear power division, a post he held until 1980. From 1981 and 1988, he served as executive consultant to Bechtel Power Corporation in San Francisco, and became vice president of Bechtel International in 1984, a position he kept until 1989. In 1990, he began work as a private executive consultant, and ended his career as a Senior Technical Advisor to the weapons safety program of the National Nuclear Security Administration.
He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1976 for his contributions to fast reactor technology, nuclear fuel reprocessing, and especially the first remote-handling completely closed fuel-cycle plant. He was also a recipient of a special ANS award for his work on the Source Term. He was a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineering, and received the Robert E. Wilson award from AIChE in 1975 for his contributions to nuclear chemical engineering.
Levenson earned a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota in 1943.
Milton Levenson passed away on March 31, 2018.
Read Nuclear News from July 1983 for more on Milt.
