Demonstration of retrieval methods for Westinghouse Hanford Corporation by EPW Industrial Services Incorporated, trial number 2, April 30, 1996

Westinghouse Hanford Company has been pursuing strategies to break up and retrieve the radioactive waste material in single shell storage tanks at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, by working with non-radioactive ``saltcake`` and sludge material that simulate the actual waste. Previous trials run by MPW for Westinghouse Hanford Company (report dated October 20, 1995) resulted in difficulty breaking up the simulant using three approaches, with pressures to I 0,000 psi and flow rates to 56 gpm. The saltcake sirnulant was extremely hard, with a tensile strength similar to concrete. Westinghouse Hanford proposed a second set of trials utilizing a range of four sirnulants to attempt to bracket the capability of the I 0,000 psi waterblast stream. This set of trials had one simulant similar to the soft sludge previously trialed, two similar to the hard saltcake but with a lower strength, and one with a coarse rock-salt in a saltcake matrix, which is quite low in strength. Under this proposal, MPW would attempt to dislodge the four different simulants us@@ng two methods, for a total of eight pans. Each pan would be 4-foot square x I- 1/2-foot deep. The approaches would be as follows: A. Rotary tooling approaching straight down, with two triangle nozzles, each at a nominal 12.5 gpm at I 0,000 psi, at a 45-degree angle. B. Straight in to the exposed edge of the material with an articulated ``water cannon`` -with a triangle nozzle rated at approximately 25 gpm