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Division Spotlight
Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
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.
Thomas E. Michener, David R. Rector, Judith M. Cuta
Nuclear Technology | Volume 199 | Number 3 | September 2017 | Pages 330-349
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2017.1305190
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
COBRA-SFS, a thermal-hydraulic code developed for steady-state and transient analysis of multiassembly spent-fuel storage and transportation systems, has been incorporated into the Used Nuclear Fuel-Storage, Transportation and Disposal Analysis Resource and Data System tool as a module devoted to spent-fuel-package thermal analysis. This paper summarizes the basic formulation of the equations and models used in the COBRA-SFS code, showing that COBRA-SFS fully captures the important physical behavior governing the thermal performance of spent-fuel storage systems, with internal and external natural convection flow patterns, and heat transfer by convection, conduction, and thermal radiation. Of particular significance is the capability for detailed thermal radiation modeling within the fuel rod array.
