The Catholic University of America’s Vitreous State Laboratory (VSL) recently received a $31 million four-year contract to help the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) with one of the largest nuclear cleanup efforts in the world: the Hanford site in Washington state that supplied the Manhattan Project with plutonium. The principal investigator for the project is Ian Pegg, VSL director and professor of physics.
The mission of the Vitreous State Laboratory’s scientists and engineers is to conduct research to develop safer and more cost effective methods to convert wastes of diverse chemical compositions into stable glass – a process called vitrification. This creation of stable glass prevents environmental leaks at the decommissioned nuclear production facility that supplied the federal government’s atomic arsenal for decades. The VSL has received grants worth millions of dollars in the past for Hanford site projects, but this is the largest single award yet.
“This contract is a real vote of confidence in what we have done in the past and our capabilities going forward,” said Pegg. “It’s a recognition of the expertise, experience, and unique facilities of the VSL.”
Over four years, the VSL will collaborate with DOE, Bechtel, and AtkinsRéalis to support the design and construction of the largest nuclear waste vitrification facility in the world, the Hanford Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP). The goal is to convert 56 million gallons of radioactive waste currently stored in 177 aging underground tanks at the site into glass. The WTP will separate the waste into low-activity waste (LAW) and high-level waste (HLW) fractions and convert each liquid stream into glass in two separate facilities.
The VSL will support Bechtel and the DOE in the development and confirmation of a new, direct-feed HLW approach for the HLW plant, where the waste is sent directly into the vitrification facility with the goal of expediting the process of turning it into glass. Construction of the HLW plant is expected to be substantially completed by 2030, and cold commissioning — or testing the system without radioactive waste — is expected to begin in 2032.
The HLW facility will melt waste using glass-forming chemicals in two large melters operating at 2,100°F. The molten glass will be poured into stainless steel containers for interim safe storage prior to permanent disposal.
The VSL maintains the largest collection of glass melters in the United States. Among the four melters is a 30-ton, one-third scale prototype of the glass melters that will be used at Hanford and the largest such test melter in the country.
In addition to Hanford, VSL conducts research and development for nuclear waste treatment programs at DOE’s Savannah River and Idaho sites, as well as at the Sellafield site in the United Kingdom and the Rokkasho site in Japan.