Research And Development Support Of The Hanford Site Tank Waste Remediation System

The research and development of new technology in support of the tank waste remediation system (TWRS) program at Hanford is largely driven by the unique situation with the Hanford radioactive tank wastes. The operational history at Hanford has involved three different major processes and several major campaigns to recover fission products from the wastes, and has not maintained a segregation of the high-level wastes. The result is a very diverse inventory with very high content of solids of many different chemical constituents and great complexity. The R & D program must not only assure that an acceptable strategy for remediation of these wastes can be put in place, it must also define ways of improving the cost effectiveness of the strategy to make the mammoth task more tractable.