Use of nuclear facilities at Argonne-West to support new environmental missions

At Argonne National Laboratory-West, facilities that were originally constructed to support the development of liquid-metal reactor technology are being used to meet the environmental and waste management need of the US Department of Energy. These needs include waste characterization, waste testing, and waste treatment technology development. Waste characterization and repackaging activities are being performed in the Hot Fuel Examination Facility for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) Experimental Test Program. Characterization activities include sampling the gas in actual waste containers, categorizing waste contents for their gas generation potential, and extracting solid samples. A new waste testing project will utilize the Zero Powered Physics Reactor facility. In the workroom of these facility, laboratory gas generation experiments will be conducted with contact-handled transuranic waste. Both the characterization and waste testing activities are part of the effort to prepare the WIPP performance assessment. Waste treatment demonstrations have or will be conducted at the Transient Reactor Test facility and involve private sector participants. The demonstrations involve the development of thermal treatment for materials containing residual amounts of plutonium using plasma-arc technology. The success of these new programs is largely due to experience gained from past missions in such areas as radiological control and nuclear safety