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DNFSB spots possible bottleneck in Hanford’s waste vitrification
Workers change out spent 27,000-pound TSCR filter columns and place them on a nearby storage pad during a planned outage in 2023. (Photo: DOE)
While the Department of Energy recently celebrated the beginning of hot commissioning of the Hanford Site’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP), which has begun immobilizing the site’s radioactive tank waste in glass through vitrification, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board has reported a possible bottleneck in waste processing. According to the DNFSB, unless current systems run efficiently, the issue could result in the interruption of operations at the WTP’s Low-Activity Waste Facility, where waste vitrification takes place.
During operations, the LAW Facility will process an average of 5,300 gallons of tank waste per day, according to Bechtel, the contractor leading design, construction, and commissioning of the WTP. That waste is piped to the facility after being treated by Hanford’s Tanks Side Cesium Removal (TSCR) system, which filters undissolved solid material and removes cesium from liquid waste.
According to a November 7 activity report by the DNFSB, the TSCR system may not be able to produce waste feed fast enough to keep up with the LAW Facility’s vitrification rate.
T. S. Bulischeck, D. van Rooyen
Nuclear Technology | Volume 55 | Number 2 | November 1981 | Pages 383-393
Technical Paper | Materials | doi.org/10.13182/NT55-383
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Pressurized water reactor steam generator tubing fabricated from Inconel 600 with processing histories typical of past and current production methods has been evaluated for stress corrosion cracking susceptibility. Quantitative relationships between failure times and the various factors that affect the susceptibility are being developed. These variables include stress, strain, strain rate, environment, and temperature. Constant extension rate tests have been employed to simulate material subjected to active deformation produced by denting and to provide data on crack velocities. Reverse tube U-bend specimens provide failure time versus temperature relationships in service-related environments for determining the service life expectancy of tubing that was no longer actively denting. Constant load and cyclic load tests have also been conducted. Initial results indicate that semilog Arrhenius relationships with temperature exist in the crack propagation stage and possibly crack in the initiation stage, which may make it possible to evaluate various heats of material and heat treatments with short-term high temperature tests.