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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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ANS joins others in seeking to discuss SNF/HLW impasse
The American Nuclear Society joined seven other organizations to send a letter to Energy Secretary Christopher Wright on July 8, asking to meet with him to discuss “the restoration of a highly functioning program to meet DOE’s legal responsibility to manage and dispose of the nation’s commercial and legacy defense spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level radioactive waste (HLW).”
John E. Mendel
Nuclear Technology | Volume 32 | Number 1 | January 1977 | Pages 72-87
Technical Paper | Materials in Waste Storage / Radioactive Waste | doi.org/10.13182/NT77-A31739
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Glass is a good material in which to incorporate high-level radioactive waste (HLW) for permanent storage. HLW, a complex mixture of fission products and actinides, results from the reprocessing of spent power reactor fuel elements to reclaim uranium and plutonium. Processes for making low-temperature waste glasses (1050°C processing temperature) have been developed to the stage that they can be utilized in commercial reprocessing plants in the early 1980’s. A representative low-melting waste glass formulation has been shown, in accelerated tests, to possess satisfactory thermal and radiation stability for many centuries of storage, and indications are that this stability will be maintained for longer times. The waste glass can be melted and stored in Type 304L stainless-steel canisters, although investigations of metals that may have increased high-temperature strength is continuing. A ceramic melting process that will permit manufacture of higher melting HLW glass, if this proves desirable, is also being developed.