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Conference on Nuclear Training and Education: A Biennial International Forum (CONTE 2025)
February 3–6, 2025
Amelia Island, FL|Omni Amelia Island Resort
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2024: The Year in Nuclear—July through September
Another calendar year has passed. Before heading too far into 2025, let’s look back at what happened in 2024 in the nuclear community. In today's post, compiled from Nuclear News and Nuclear Newswire are what we feel are the top nuclear news stories from July through September 2024.
Stay tuned for the top stories from the rest of the past year.
George D. Cremeans
Nuclear Technology | Volume 87 | Number 4 | December 1989 | Pages 745-754
Technical Paper | TMI-2: Decontamination and Waste Management / Radioactive Waste Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT89-A27667
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The March 1979 accident at Three Mile Island Unit 2 and the subsequent 10-yr cleanup generated ∼8706 m3 (∼2300000 gal) of radioactively contaminated water, herein referred to as accident-generated water (AGW). Although most, if not all, of this inventory could be decontaminated to acceptable regulatory levels governing river discharge and released to the Susquehanna River, a settlement agreement with the city of Lancaster specifically prohibited the utility from doing so prior to an acceptable environmental evaluation by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. To dispose of this large water inventory, nine alternative disposal methods were evaluated. This evaluation considered each method’s technical feasibility, environmental effect, cost, and public acceptance. On the basis of these criteria, as well as political and institutional considerations, disposal of the AGW by forced evaporation and collection of the evaporated solids was selected as the most acceptable method. The selected method is designed to provide a decontamination factor of 1000 to the radioactive particulates in the AGW. The system consists of (a) a vapor recompression distillation unit to distill the AGW in a closed cycle process and collect the purified distillate for subsequent release by vaporization, (b) an auxiliary evaporatory to further concentrate the bottoms from the main evaporator, (c) a flash vaporizer unit to flash the purified distillate to the atmosphere in a controlled and monitored manner, (d) a blender/dryer to produce a dry solid from the concentrated waste, and (e) a packaging system to prepare and package the solid waste in containers acceptable for shipment and burial at a commercial low-level radioactive waste disposal site. The projected time span for AGW disposal operations is ∼2 yr, allowing for scheduled availability of the 8706-m3 (2300000-gal) inventory and planned system maintenance time. The estimated volume of waste generated, packaged, and shipped during this operation is ∼145 tonnes (∼160 t). The waste conforms to the burial requirements for class A and transportation requirements for low specific activity radioactive material.