Increasing Safety and Reducing Environmental Damage Risk from Aging High-Level Radioactive Waste Tanks

Cracks of various shapes and sizes exist in large high-level waste (HLW) tanks at several DOE sites. There is justifiable concern that these cracks could grow to become unstable causing a substantial release of liquid contaminants to the environment. Accurate prediction of crack growth behavior in the tanks, especially during accident scenarios, is not possible with existing analysis methodologies. This research project responds to this problem by developing an improved ability to predict crack growth in material structure combinations that are ductile (Fig. 1). This new model not only addresses the problem for these tanks, but also has applicability to any crack in any ductile structure