RADIOACTIVE DEMONSTRATIONS OF FLUIDIZED BED STEAM REFORMING WITH ACUTAL HANFORD LOW ACTIVITY WASTES VERIFYING FBSR AS A SUPPLEMENTARY TREATMENT

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of River Protection is responsible for the retrieval, treatment, immobilization, and disposal of Hanford’s tank waste. Currently there are approximately 56 million gallons of highly radioactive mixed wastes awaiting treatment. A key aspect of the River Protection Project cleanup mission is to construct and operate the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP). The WTP will separate the tank waste into high-level waste (HLW) and low-activity waste (LAW) fractions, both of which will subsequently be vitrified. The projected throughput capacity of the WTP LAW Vitrification Facility is insufficient to complete the cleanup mission in the time frame required by the Hanford Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order, also known as the Tri-Party Agreement (TPA). Therefore, Supplemental Treatment is required both to meet the TPA treatment requirements as well as to more cost effectively complete the tank waste treatment mission. Fluidized Bed Steam Reforming (FBSR) is one of the supplementary treatments being considered. FBSR offers a moderate temperature (700-750°C) continuous method by which LAW and other secondary wastes can be processed irrespective of whether they contain organics, nitrates/nitrites, sulfates/sulfides, chlorides, fluorides, and/or radio-nuclides like I-129 and Tc-99. Radioactive testing of Savannah River LAW (Tank 50) shimmed to resemble Hanford LAW and actual Hanford LAW (SX-105 and AN-103) have produced a ceramic (mineral) waste form which is the same as the non-radioactive waste simulants tested at the engineering scale. The radioactive testing demonstrated that the FBSR process can retain the volatile radioactive components that cannot be contained at vitrification temperatures. The radioactive and nonradioactive mineral waste forms that were produced by co-processing waste with kaolin clay in an FBSR process are shown to be as durable as LAW glass.

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