From Toxic Legacy to Bright Future: America Turns Nuclear Waste Into Glass

Credits: AP

The U.S. Department of Energy has reached a key point in cleanup history by establishing the largest nuclear-waste vitrification facility in the world, located at Hanford, Washington, previously the most polluted location in the United States.

For many years, Hanford contained over 325 million liters of atomic waste from producing plutonium for the Cold War. The hazardous past of the site is now in the process of literally solidifying.Vitrification is a burn-and-contain method in which the waste is burned at over 1,100°C and then combined with glass-creating additives, locking radioactivity within the stable glass blocks, which may last for millennia. Like trapping a monster within crystal, except this monster is real.

After 20 years of delays and spending over $10 billion, the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant has generated its first few cylinders of atomic glass, each with an approximate capacity of 5,500 liters or 1,400 gallons of fused atomic waste. The cylinders demonstrate significant progress in one of the toughest cleanup projects on Earth.The project, expected to continue until 2070, is to neutralize almost 90% of the nuclear waste left on the Hanford site. This is an enormous accomplishment for the grandeur of science, safety, and the environment; proof that humanity can repair wounds created by using technology correctly.

References :

https://www.science.org/content/article/polluted-weapons-factory-begins-locking-nuclear-waste-glass