Organic tank safety project: Effect of water partial pressure on the equilibrium water contents of waste samples from Hanford Tank 241-BY-108

Water content plays a crucial role in the strategy developed by Webb et al. to prevent propagating or sustainable chemical reactions in the organic-bearing wastes stored in the 20 Organic Tank Watch List tanks at the US Department of Energy`s Hanford Site. Because of water`s importance in ensuring that the organic-bearing wastes continue to be stored safely, Duke Engineering and Services Hanford commissioned the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to investigate the effect of water partial pressure (P{sub H2O}) on the water content of organic-bearing or representative wastes. Of the various interrelated controlling factors affecting the water content in wastes, P{sub H2O} is the most susceptible to being controlled by the and Hanford Site`s environmental conditions and, if necessary, could be managed to maintain the water content at an acceptable level or could be used to adjust the water content back to an acceptable level. Of the various waste types resulting from weapons production and waste-management operations at the Hanford Site, Webb et al. determined that saltcake wastes are the most likely to require active management to maintain the wastes in a Conditionally Safe condition. A Conditionally Safe waste is one that satisfies the waste classification criteria based on water content alone or a combination of water content and either total organic carbon (TOC) content or waste energetics. To provide information on the behavior of saltcake wastes, two waste samples taken from Tank 241-BY-108 (BY-108) were selected for study, even though BY-108 is not on the Organic Tanks Watch List because of their ready availability and their similarity to some of the organic-bearing saltcakes

Ferrocyanide Safety Project: Comparison of actual and simulated ferrocyanide waste properties

In the 1950s, additional high-level radioactive waste storage capacity was needed to accommodate the wastes that would result from the production of recovery of additional nuclear defense materials. To provide this additional waste storage capacity, the Hanford Site operating contractor developed a process to decontaminate aqueous wastes by precipitating radiocesium as an alkali nickel ferrocyanide; this process allowed disposal of the aqueous waste. The radiocesium scavenging process as developed was used to decontaminate (1) first-cycle bismuth phosphate (BiPO{sub 4}) wastes, (2) acidic wastes resulting from uranium recovery operations, and (3) the supernate from neutralized uranium recovery wastes. The radiocesium scavenging process was often coupled with other scavenging processes to remove radiostrontium and radiocobalt. Because all defense materials recovery processes used nitric acid solutions, all of the wastes contained nitrate, which is a strong oxidizer. The variety of wastes treated, and the occasional coupling of radiostrontium and radiocobalt scavenging processes with the radiocesium scavenging process, resulted in ferrocyanide-bearing wastes having many different compositions. In this report, we compare selected physical, chemical, and radiochemical properties measured for Tanks C-109 and C-112 wastes and selected physical and chemical properties of simulated ferrocyanide wastes to assess the representativeness of stimulants prepared by WHC

Measurement of the Bottom-Strange Meson Mixing Phase in the Full CDF Data Set

We report a measurement of the bottom-strange meson mixing phase \beta_s using the time evolution of B0_s -> J/\psi (->\mu+\mu-) \phi (-> K+ K-) decays in which the quark-flavor content of the bottom-strange meson is identified at production. This measurement uses the full data set of proton-antiproton collisions at sqrt(s)= 1.96 TeV collected by the Collider Detector experiment at the Fermilab Tevatron, corresponding to 9.6 fb-1 of integrated luminosity. We report confidence regions in the two-dimensional space of \beta_s and the B0_s decay-width difference \Delta\Gamma_s, and measure \beta_s in [-\pi/2, -1.51] U [-0.06, 0.30] U [1.26, \pi/2] at the 68% confidence level, in agreement with the standard model expectation. Assuming the standard model value of \beta_s, we also determine \Delta\Gamma_s = 0.068 +- 0.026 (stat) +- 0.009 (syst) ps-1 and the mean B0_s lifetime, \tau_s = 1.528 +- 0.019 (stat) +- 0.009 (syst) ps, which are consistent and competitive with determinations by other experiments.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, Phys. Rev. Lett 109, 171802 (2012

Organic Tank Safety Project: development of a method to measure the equilibrium water content of Hanford organic tank wastes and demonstration of method on actual waste

Some of Hanford`s underground waste storage tanks contain Organic- bearing high level wastes that are high priority safety issues because of potentially hazardous chemical reactions of organics with inorganic oxidants in these wastes such as nitrates and nitrites. To ensure continued safe storage of these wastes, Westinghouse Hanford Company has placed affected tanks on the Organic Watch List and manages them under special rules. Because water content has been identified as the most efficient agent for preventing a propagating reaction and is an integral part of the criteria developed to ensure continued safe storage of Hanford`s organic-bearing radioactive tank wastes, as part of the Organic Tank Safety Program the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory developed and demonstrated a simple and easily implemented procedure to determine the equilibrium water content of these potentially reactive wastes exposed to the range of water vapor pressures that might be experienced during the wastes` future storage. This work focused on the equilibrium water content and did not investigate the various factors such as @ ventilation, tank surface area, and waste porosity that control the rate that the waste would come into equilibrium, with either the average Hanford water partial pressure 5.5 torr or other possible water partial pressures

Organic Tank Safety Project: Effect of water partial pressure on the equilibrium water content of waste samples from Hanford Tank 241-U-105

Water content plays a crucial role in the strategy developed by Webb et al. to prevent propagating or sustainable chemical reactions in the organic-bearing wastes stored in the 20 Organic Tank Watch List tanks at the U.S. Department of Energy`s Hanford Site. Because of water`s importance in ensuring that the organic-bearing wastes continue to be stored safely, Duke Engineering and Services Hanford commissioned the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to investigate the effect of water partial pressure (P{sub H2O}) on the water content of organic-bearing or representative wastes. Of the various interrelated controlling factors affecting the water content in wastes, P{sub H2O} is the most susceptible to being controlled by the and Hanford Site`s environmental conditions and, if necessary, could be managed to maintain the water content at an acceptable level or could be used to adjust the water content back to an acceptable level. Of the various waste types resulting from weapons production and waste-management operations at the Hanford Site, determined that saltcake wastes are the most likely to require active management to maintain the wastes in a Conditionally Safe condition. Webb et al. identified Tank U-105 as a Conditionally Safe saltcake tank. A Conditionally Safe waste is one that is currently safe based on waste classification criteria but could, if dried, be classified as {open_quotes}Unsafe.{close_quotes} To provide information on the behavior of organic-bearing wastes, the Westinghouse Hanford Company provided us with four waste samples taken from Tank 241-U-105 (U-105) to determine the effect of P{sub H2O} on their equilibrium water content

Organic Tank Safety Project: Equilibrium moisture determination task fiscal year 1997. Annual progress report

Twenty waste storage tanks at the U.S. Department of Energy`s Hanford Site are included in the Organic Tank Watch List. The water content in the wastes plays a significant role in preventing propagating or sustainable chemical reactions, and the fuel and energetics independent safety criterion has been determined to be 20 wt % water. To ensure that the organic-bearing wastes continue to be stored safely, Duke Engineering and Services Hanford commissioned the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to investigate the effect of water partial pressure (P{sub H2O}) on the water content of organic-bearing or representative wastes. If necessary, the P{sub H2O} could be managed to maintain the water content at an acceptable level or adjust the water content back to an acceptable level. During fiscal year 1997, the effect of P{sub H2O} was tested to determine how organic-bearing wastes will respond if exposed to environmental Hanford water partial pressures or other potential water partial pressures. The samples tested were obtained from Organic Watch List Tanks, tanks that D.A. Reynolds of Lockheed Martin Hanford suspects may contain wastes having significant organic content, or wastes characteristic of organic-bearing wastes. Temperatures at or near maximum tank waste surface temperatures were used in the tests. At 26{degrees}C, the lowest temperature used, the water partial pressures used in the tests ranged from 2 to 22 torr. At 41{degrees}C, the highest temperature used, the water partial pressures used ran ed from 3.5 to 48 torr

Organic tank safety project: Preliminary results of energetics and thermal behavior studies of model organic nitrate and/or nitrite mixtures and a simulated organic waste

As a result of years of production and recovery of nuclear defense materials and subsequent waste management at the Hanford Site, organic-bearing radioactive high-level wastes (HLW) are currently stored in large (up to 3. ML) single-shell storage tanks (SSTs). Because these wastes contain both fuels (organics) and the oxidants nitrate and nitrite, rapid energetic reactions at certain conditions could occur. In support of Westinghouse Hanford Company`s (WHC) efforts to ensure continued safe storage of these organic- and oxidant-bearing wastes and to define the conditions necessary for reactions to occur, we measured the thermal sensitivities and thermochemical and thermokinetic properties of mixtures of selected organics and sodium nitrate and/or nitrite and a simulated Hanford organic-bearing waste using thermoanalytical technologies. These thermoanalytical technologies are used by chemical reactivity hazards evaluation organizations within the chemical industry to assess chemical reaction hazards