Successes And Emerging Issues In Simulating The Processing Behavior Of Liquid-Particle Nuclear Waste Slurries At The Savannah River Site - 205E

Slurries of inorganic solids, containing both stable and radioactive elements, were produced during the cold war as by-products of the production of plutonium and enriched uranium and stored in large tanks at the Savannah River Site. Some of this high level waste is being processed into a stable glass waste form today. Waste processing involves various large scale operations such as tank mixing, inter-tank transfers, washing, gravity settling and decanting, chemical adjustment, and vitrification. The rheological properties of waste slurries are of particular interest. Methods for modeling flow curve data and predicting the properties of slurry blends are particularly important during certain operational phases. Several methods have been evaluated to predict the rheological properties of sludge slurry blends from the data on the individual slurries. These have been relatively successful