High-level waste tanks

Bonnesen, F. V., Delmau, L. H., Moyer, B. A., Lumetta, G. J., Development of effective solvent modifiers for the solvent extraction of cesium from alkaline high-level tank waste, Solv. Extr. Ion Exch., 21,141-170, 2003. 

Ceramicrete stabilization of Tc, partitioned from high-level tank wastes, was demonstrated by Singh et al. [11]. The waste stream was a product of a complexation-elution process that separates Tc from HLW, such as supernatant from salt waste tanks at Hanford and Savannah River. A typical waste solution generated during the complexation-elution process contains 1 M NaOH, 1 M ethylenediamine, and 0.005 M Sn +. 

Finally, besides the obvious implications of these results to processing high-level tank wastes, they also have a dramatic inpact on the potential migration of Sr in the subsurface environment. For example, current EMSP studies (15) have focused on the adsorption or attenuation reactions of Sr under low... 

High-Level Waste. There are approximately 285 million liters containing approximately 590 x 10 curies ( ) of military and 2.3 million liters of commercial high-level liquid waste (O presently stored in tanks. Although the volume of high-level military waste is much greater, the curie content of strontium 90 of both sources is approximately the same if stored spent fuel rods from commercial reactors are included in the inventory. The total curie content will be the same for both sources by 1985 at the present rate of use ( ). To date, there has been no disposal of any high-level waste. 

High-level defense waste solutions resulting from plutonium recovery and waste processing activities currently are stored in mild steel-lined concrete tanks located underground at the U.S. Department of Energy s Hanford Site. Low radioelement solubility and extensive radioelement sorption on surrounding sediment help maintain isolation of hazardous radionuclides from the biosphere in the event of tank failure. 

The four 30,000-gal tanks were used to store wastes from early processes used at the ICPP. One of these tanks has been emptied, one is nearly empty, and the other two are about one-half full but will be emptied in the near future. When emptied, none of these tanks are planned for the routine storage of radioactive liquids, as they do not meet the present secondary containment criterion for storage of high-level radioactive waste. 

Routine Releases. The high-level waste operations under consideration here are the storage of liquid waste, waste calcination, and storage of calcine in bins. In the 20 years of storing high-level liquid waste, there have been no instances of releases to the ground, nor even of leaks of waste from the tanks to their surrounding vaults. Similarly, there have... 

U adioactive wastes have accumulated at Hanford since 1944 when the first reactor fuel was processed for plutonium recovery. High-level liquid wastes generated by the Purex, Redox, and BiP04 processes have been stored as neutralized slurries in 151 underground storage tanks. 

A simplified ventilation flow sketch (Figure 2) of the existing NFS high-level liquid waste storage facility shows the layout and relationship of the components. For both types of wastes a spare tank is available to transfer the existing waste in the event the operational tank should leak. The Purex neutralized HLW tank is operated at the boiling temperature by means of an immersion heater since the heat content of the currently stored waste is not sufficient to self boil. This is done to concentrate further the transferred slurries to the control limit of less than 8M sodium. 

From tank 103-BY, also containing 4.60 X 10 tCi/liter In High-Level Radioaetive Waste Management Campbell, M. Advances in Chemistry American Chemical Society Washington, DC, 1976. 

Chromium speciation in the vadose zone beneath the Hanford S-SX nuclear waste tank farm. Chromium is present in relatively high concentrations in the high-level nuclear waste tanks at Hanford, WA and has been found at concentrations as high as... 

High-level radioactive waste (HLW) will be converted from an alkaline slurry to a durable borosilicate glass in the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) at the Savannah River Plant (SRP) in South Carolina [17]. This waste is the residue from thirty years of reprocessing of irradiated nuclear fuels for national defense purposes and is currently stored in large carbon-steel tanks. 

Tank storage of high level liquid wastes... 

Storage tanks at Hanford, Washington, contain 55 million gallons of high-level nuclear waste. Each tank pictured here holds 1 million gallons. 

The molybdate method has also been applied for remote determination of silica in highly radioactive defense waste salt solutions of the Savannah River Site (SRS), which suffered the problems with sodium aluminum silicate scale forming in the evaporators used to remove excess process water from the high-level radioactive waste tank farm [4]. 

Radioactive wastes are usually stored in underground tanks or in temporary storage at reactor sites for recycling or disposal (Whicker and Schultz 1982a). For low-level wastes, containment and isolation are the preferred disposal options, including burial, hydraulic injection into deep geological strata, and ocean disposal (Table 32.10). Options for the disposal of high-level wastes include... 

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