Pacific Northwest National Laboratory  May 16, 2018 To vitrify the material, researchers mixed the liquid waste with glass-forming materials and pumped it, at a controlled rate, into the melter which sits inside a furnace that keeps the glass forming materials within it at 2100°F. The test produced approximately 20 pounds of glass immobilizing the radioactive and chemical materials within a durable glass waste form. The laboratory-scale demonstration is an important step toward the eventual treatment of millions of gallons of hazardous waste generated during past plutonium production at Hanford… read more.