Decontamination of DWPF canisters by glass frit blasting

High-level radioactive waste at the Savannah River Plant will be incorporated in borosilicate glass for permanent disposal. The waste glass will be encapsulated in a 304L stainless steel canister. During the filling operation the outside of the canister will become contaminated. This contamination must be reduced to an accepable level before the canister leaves the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF). Tests with contaminated coupons have demonstrated that this decontamination can be accomplished by blasting the surface with glass frit. The contaminated glass frit byproduct of this operation is used as a feedstock for the waste glass process, so no secondary waste is created. Three blasting techniques, using glass frit as the blasting medium, were evaluated. Air-injected slurry blasting was the most promising and was chosen for further development. The optimum parametric values for this process were determined in tests using coupon weight loss as the output parameter. 1 reference, 13 figures, 3 tables