Millimeter-Wave Measurements of High Level and Low Level Activity Glass Melts

EMSP supported research of millimeter-wave technology for nuclear waste glass melter monitoring has been very productive in establishing this field and showing great progress. This work has garnered significant recognition, winning an R&D 100 Award for viscosity monitoring, a Best Paper Award by the American Ceramic Society for nuclear waste glass monitoring, investment by the Glass Plus industry consortium to test this technology for glass fiber manufacture, investment by Savannah River Technology Center in purchasing key hardware components for additional tests, and Japanese initiated exchange visits between MIT and the vitrification facilities at Japanese Atomic Energy Research Institute (JAERI) in Tokai to review this technology. There are also potentially important spin offs to other areas including nuclear and fossil fuel power production, and National Institute of Health sponsored research as indicated below. Consequently, this work has the potential of becoming a major inter nationally recognized EMSP success story. A summary of the main accomplishments follows. The readers are referred to the cited reference publications for more details, many of which were EMSP supported by this work