Hanford immobilized LAW product acceptance: Initial Tanks Focus Area testing data package

Abstract

The Hanford Site's mission has been to produce nuclear materials for the US Department of Energy (DOE) and its predecessors. A large inventory of radioactive and mixed waste, largely generated during plutonium production, exists in 177 underground single- and double-shell tanks. These wastes are to be retrieved and separated into low-activity waste (LAW) and high-level waste (HLW) fractions. The total volume of LAW requiring immobilization will include the LAW separated from the tank waste, as well as new wastes generated by the retrieval, pretreatment, and immobilization processes. Per the Tri-Party Agreement (1994), both the LAW and HLW will be vitrified. It has been estimated that vitrification of the LAW waste will result in over 500,000 metric tons or 200,000 m{sup 3} of immobilized LAW (ILAW) glass. The ILAW glass is to be disposed of onsite in a near-surface burial facility. It must be demonstrated that the disposal system will adequately retain the radionuclides and prevent contamination of the surrounding environment. This report describes a study of the impacts of systematic glass-composition variation on the responses from accelerated laboratory corrosion tests of representative LAW glasses. A combination of two tests, the product consistency test and vapor-hydration test, is being used to give indictations of the relative rate at which a glass could be expected to corrode in the burial scenario.

Related Papers

• CHARACTERIZATION OF THE SOLIDS WASTE IN THE HANFORD WASTE TANKS USING A COMBINATION OF XRD & SEM & PLM(2003)
• → Process Chemistry for the Pretreatment of Hanford Tank Wastes(1995)11 cited
• Vitrification of low level and mixed (radioactive and hazardous) wastes: Lessons learned from high level waste vitrification(1994)
• → Results from Analyses of a Hanford Envelope A Radioactive Glass Waste Form(2003)
• High-Level Waste Melter Review(2002)