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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.
Balhassn S. M. Ali, Terry Y. P. Yuen, Mohamed Saber
Nuclear Technology | Volume 196 | Number 1 | October 2016 | Pages 130-140
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NT15-117
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The high-temperature components in thermal power plants are subject to creep deformation as a result of operating at elevated temperature and high steam pressure. Creep is nonlinear deformation leading to rupture and component failure; therefore, it has to be monitored closely, especially when the high-temperature components approach the last stage of their designed lifetime. This paper presents the design and application of two small specimen types that can be used to assess the severity of creep damage in these components as they age. These specimens can be used to assess the creep strength and remaining lifetime of in-service components. Small material samples can be removed safely from operating component surfaces and then be used to manufacture these small specimens. These specimens can be manufactured and tested easily using pin connection. This paper places emphasis on specimen design and loading for creep testing. Two high-temperature materials (P91 and P92 steels) are used to validate the accuracy of the new testing technique. The creep results obtained from these small creep test specimens are compared with results obtained from corresponding uniaxial creep tests. Very good correlation is found between the two sets of results.