Development of the Flow Sheet for Incinerating Contaminated Combustible Waste

Archive description

One of the major problems inherent in any work associated with radioactivity is the disposal of material contaminated with activity by such work. Biological investigations have shown that this material, unless contaminated to an insignificant degree, cannot be indiscriminately discharged to the plant environment without some hazard to humans, either directly or indirectly. These materials may be in the liquid, solid, or gas form. No radioactive material of gaseous nature has been encountered at Mound Laboratory. In regard to liquid wastes, a process has been in service here for several years which satisfactorily decontaminated these wastes at this laboratory and concentrates the activity originally contained therein to a very small percentage of the original volume. Solid wastes, however, accumulate daily in large amount throughout this site, and these, along with the liquid waste concentrates (in solid form), are package and shipped several hundred miles to a national burial ground. Because the amounts of solid waste sent to burial represent large volumes (thousands of cubic feet annually), research was initiated to determine methods for concentrating this material to reduce the quantity requiring burial. The largest percentage of this material by far is combustible, and for this reason an incineration process was fully investigated in this connection. This process involves the incineration of the waste, the decontamination of the flue gas by a wet process, and the transfer of the contaminated incinerator ash, fly-ash, and soot particles in water, to the liquid waste process for further concentration. This investigation and its outcome is covered by this report; the small percentage of noncombustible solid waste presents a separate problem and is not discussed here. This report serves as a recommendation that a full-scale incineration process be installed at Mound Laboratory and provides a complete flow sheet for this process and recommended designs for the critical parts of the processing equipment. It contains a justification for the process, a history of the investigation including early work and pilot plant results, and explanation of the values and information given in the flow sheet, and the reasons for the recommended design features.