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The Young Members Group works to encourage and enable all young professional members to be actively involved in the efforts and endeavors of the Society at all levels (Professional Divisions, ANS Governance, Local Sections, etc.) as they transition from the role of a student to the role of a professional. It sponsors non-technical workshops and meetings that provide professional development and networking opportunities for young professionals, collaborates with other Divisions and Groups in developing technical and non-technical content for topical and national meetings, encourages its members to participate in the activities of the Groups and Divisions that are closely related to their professional interests as well as in their local sections, introduces young members to the rules and governance structure of the Society, and nominates young professionals for awards and leadership opportunities available to members.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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.
Hoai-Nam Tran, Yasuyoshi Kato, Peng Hong Liem, Van-Khanh Hoang, Sy Minh Tuan Hoang
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 11 | November 2019 | Pages 1460-1473
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2019.1601470
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper presents the investigation of minor actinide (MA) transmutation in supercritical CO2-cooled and sodium-cooled fast reactors (S-CO2-FR and SFR) with the thermal output of 600 MW(thermal) for simultaneously attaining low burnup reactivity swings and reducing long-life radioactive waste. Minor actinides are loaded uniformly in the fuel of the cores, and the MA contents are determined to minimize the burnup reactivity swings. In the S-CO2-FR, the burnup reactivity swing is minimized to 0.11% ∆k/kk’ when the MA content is 6.0 wt%. In the SFR, the MA content was determined to reduce the burnup reactivity swing while maintaining sodium void reactivity under a design limitation of 5 $. The burnup reactivity swing of the SFR is reduced to 1.94% ∆k/kk’, whereas sodium void reactivity is about 4.7 $ when 10.0 wt% MAs are loaded. The low burnup reactivity swing enables minimization of control rod operation during fuel burnup. The number of control rods in the two reactors is reduced to ten, which is half of a typical sodium-cooled mixed-oxide fuel MONJU reactor without MA loading. The MA transmutation rates in the S-CO2-FR and SFR are 42.2 and 52.2 kg/year, respectively, which are equivalent to the production rates in seven and nine light water reactors of the same electrical output.