Glass Property Models, Constraints, and Formulation Approaches for Vitrification of High-Level Nuclear Wastes at the US Hanford Site

Current plans for legacy nuclear wastes stored in underground tanks at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington are that they will be separated into high-level waste and low-activity waste fractions that will be vitrified sepa-rately. Formulating optimized glass compositions that maximize the waste loading in glass is critical for successful and econom-ical treatment and immobilization of these nuclear wastes. Glass property-composition models have been developed and applied to formulate glass compositions for various objectives for the past several decades. Property models with associated uncertainties combined with composition and property constraints have been used to develop preliminary glass formulation algorithms designed for vitrification process control and waste-form qualification at the planned waste vitrification plant. This paper pro-vides an overview of the current status of glass property-composition models, constraints applicable to Hanford waste vitrifica-tion, and glass formulation approaches that have been developed for vitrification of hazardous and highly radioactive wastes stored at the Hanford Site.