Increasing High-Level Waste Loading In Glass Without Changing The Baseline Melter Technology

The main factors that determine the cost of high-level waste (HLW) vitrification are the waste loading (which determines the volume of glass) and the melting rate. Product quality should be the only factor determining the waste loading while melter design should provide a rapid melting technology. In reality, the current HLW melters are slow in glass-production rate and are subjected to operational risks that require waste loading to be kept far below its intrinsic level. One of the constraints that decrease waste loading is the liquidus-temperature limit. close inspection reveals that this constraint is probably too severe, even for the current technology. The purpose of the liquidus-temperature constraint is to prevent solids from settling on the melter bottom. It appears that some limited settling would neither interfere with melter operation nor shorten its lifetime and that the rate of settling can be greatly reduced if only small crystals are allowed to form