Corrosion monitoring of high-level waste storage Tank 8-D2 at the West Valley Demonstration Project
- West Valley Nuclear Services Co., Inc., NY (United States)
- Rohrback Cosasco Systems, Santa Fe Spring, CA (United States)
From 1966 to 1972, nearly 600,000 gallons of highly radioactive liquid waste were generated at the site of the only commercial nuclear fuel reprocessing facility to have operated in the United States, located in West Valley, New York. This waste has been held in underground storage tanks since reprocessing operations ceased in 1972. Premature failure of tank walls represents a significant safety risk at West Valley. For this reason, application of conventional methods of probe insertion and data acquisition are impractical. Because a satisfactory corrosion monitoring system must allow for remote monitoring, as well as decontamination of any probe or coupon that comes into contact with the liquid high-level waste (HLW) held in the tanks, a fully automated Integrated Corrosion Monitoring System has been implemented at West Valley. This system allows for remote continuous monitoring of corrosion effects by linear polarization and electrical resistance probes. Real time corrosion data that indicates metal loss versus time and corrosion rate for electrical resistance probes, as well as corrosion rate and pitting tendencies for linear polarization resistance probes is depicted on a electroluminescent display. Because corrosion rates are being continuously checked, this system is ideal for monitoring the corrosive conditions that will affect the life of the containment HLW storage vessels. The probes in the system also permits the simultaneous use of coupons for determining specific types of corrosion occurring, and the average corrosion rate for the entire exposure period. This paper describes the design parameters, installation procedures, and the results of data collected from the Integrated Corrosion Monitoring System installed at West Valley.
- OSTI ID:
- 70083
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-940222--
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
COMPILED DATA
COMPUTERIZED CONTROL SYSTEMS
CORROSION
CORROSIVE EFFECTS
DATA ACQUISITION
HIGH-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTES
LIQUID WASTES
MONITORING
ON-LINE MEASUREMENT SYSTEMS
RADIOACTIVE WASTE STORAGE
REMOTE SENSING
SAFETY ENGINEERING
SLUDGES
STORAGE FACILITIES
TANKS
VAPORS
WEST VALLEY PROCESSING PLANT