Author: E. C. Smith

Publisher:

Published: 2004

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

The governments of the United Stated of America and the Russian Federation (RF) signed an Agreement September 1, 2000 to dispose of weapons plutonium that has been designated as no longer required for defense purposes. The Agreement declares that each country will disposition 34MT of excess weapons grade plutonium from their stockpiles. The preferred disposition technology is the fabrication of mixed oxide (MOx) fuel for use or burning in pressurized water reactors to destroy the plutonium. Implementation of this Agreement will require the conversion of plutonium metal to oxide and the fabrication of MOx fuel within the Russian Federation. The MOx fuel fabrication and metal to oxide conversion processes will generate solid and liquid radioactive wastes containing trace amounts of plutonium, neptunium, americium, and uranium requiring treatment, storage, and disposal. Unique to the Russian MOx fuel fabrication facility's flow-sheet is a liquid waste stream with high concentrations ({approx}1 g/l) of {sup 241}Am and non radioactive silver. The silver is used to dissolve PuO{sub 2} feed materials to the MOx fabrication facility. Technical solutions are needed to treat and solidify this liquid waste stream. Alternative treatment technologies for this liquid waste stream are being evaluated by a Russian engineering team. The technologies being evaluated include borosilicate and phosphate vitrification alternatives. The evaluations are being performed at a conceptual design level of detail under a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) contract with the Russian organization TVEL using DOE NA-26 funding. As part of this contract, the RF team is evaluating the technical and economic feasibility of the US borosilicate glass vitrification technology based on a Duratek melter to solidify this waste stream into a form acceptable for storage and geologic disposal. The composition of the glass formed from treating the waste is dictated by the concentration of silver and americium it contains. Silver is widely used as an additive in glass making. However, its solubility is known to be limited in borosilicate glasses. Further, silver, which is present as a nitrate salt in the waste, can be easily reduced to molten silver in the melting process. Molten silver, if formed, would be difficult to reintroduce into the glass matrix and could pose operating difficulties for the glass melter. This will place a limitation on the waste loading of the melter feed material to prevent the separation of silver from the waste within the melter. If the silver were recovered in the MOx fabrication process, which is currently under consideration, the composition of the glass would likely be limited only by the thermal heat load from the incorporated {sup 241}Am. The resulting mass of glass used to encapsulate the waste could then be reduced by a factor of approximately three. The vitrification process used to treat the waste stream is proposed to center on a joule-heated ceramic lined slurry fed melter. Glass furnaces of this type are used in the United States to treat high-level waste (HLW) at the: Defense Waste Processing Facility, West Valley Demonstration Project, and to process the Hanford tank waste. The waste will initially be blended with glass-forming chemicals, which are primarily sand and boric acid. The resulting slurry is pumped to the melter for conversion to glass. The melter is a ceramic lined metal box that contains a molten glass pool heated by passing electric current through the glass. Molten glass from the melter is poured into canisters to cool and solidify. They are then sealed and decontaminated to form the final waste disposal package. Emissions generated in the melter from the vitrification process are treated by an off-gas system to remove radioactive contamination and destroy nitrogen oxides (NOx).