Challenges with vitrification of Hanford High-Level Waste (HLW) to borosilicate glass – An overview

Autor: Ashutosh Goel, John S. McCloy, Richard Pokorny, Albert A. Kruger
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2019
Předmět:
Zdroj: Journal of Non-Crystalline Solids: X, Vol 4, Iss , Pp - (2019)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 2590-1591
DOI: 10.1016/j.nocx.2019.100033
Popis: The Hanford site in Washington State houses ~56 million gallons of radioactive wastes stored in 177 underground tanks. The waste must be immobilized and permanently stored, and the plan is to separate the tank wastes into low activity waste (LAW) and high-level waste (HLW) streams. The U.S. Department of Energy is building a Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant at Hanford site to separately vitrify these two waste streams in borosilicate glass using Joule-heated ceramic melters (JHCM). Although the process of nuclear waste vitrification seems to be well established, in practicality, it is faced with complex problems starting from the design of glass compositions, to processing in melters and long-term performance of the final vitrified waste forms. The article presents an overview of our current understanding of critical challenges related to the development and performance of HLW glasses. Keywords: Nuclear waste, Borosilicate, Glass, Chemical durability, Crystallization
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