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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.
I. N. Sviatoslavsky, G. L. Kulcinski, G. A. Moses, D. Bruggink, R. L. Engelstad, H. Y. Khater, E. M. Larsen, E. G. Lovell, J. J. MacFarlane, E. A. Mogahed, R. R. Peterson, M. E. Sawan, P. Wang, L. J. Wittenberg
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 26 | Number 3 | November 1994 | Pages 868-872
Inertial Confinement Fusion Reactor, Reactor Target, and Driver | Proceedings of the Eleventh Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy New Orleans, Louisiana June 19-23, 1994 | doi.org/10.13182/FST94-A40263
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper describes the design of a 1000 MWe inertially confined fusion power reactor utilizing near symmetric illumination provided by a KrF laser. The nominal laser energy is 3.4 MJ, the target gain is 118 and the rep-rate is 6.7 Hz. Sixty beams are distributed on ten horizontal planes with six beams in each plane forming a cone with the vertex at the reactor chamber center. The chamber is spherical internally with a radius of 6.5 m and is divided into 12 vertical modules consisting of two independent parts, the first wall assembly and a blanket assembly. The first wall assembly is made of a C/C composite and is cooled with non-breeding granular solid TiO2 flowing by gravity at a constant velocity. The blanket assembly is made from SiC composite and is cooled with granular Li2O also flowing by gravity. After going through the heat exchangers, the granular materials are returned to the reactor by means of a fluidized bed. The first wall is protected with a xenon buffer gas at 0.5 torr. The chamber is housed in a cylindrical building 42 m in radius and 86 m high, and is surrounded with a 1.5 m thick biological wall at a radius of 10 m. The laser beam ports are open to the containment building, sharing the same vacuum. Two power conversion cycles have been analyzed, a steam Rankine cycle with an efficiency of 47% and an advanced He gas Brayton cycle at an efficiency of 51%. The nominal COE is ∼65 mills/kWh assuming an 8% interest on capital.