Argonne National Laborato~has developed a ceramic waste form to immobilize radioactive waste salt produced during the electrometallurgical treatment of spent fiel. This study presents the first results from electron microscopy and durability testing of a ceramic waste form produced from that radioactive electrorefiner salt. The waste form consists of two primary phases: sodalite and glass. The sodalite phase appears to incorporate most of the alkali and alkaline earth fission products. Other fission products (rare earths and yttrium) tend to form a separate phase and are fi-equently associated with the actinides, which form mixed oxides. Seven-day leach test results are also presented. .
This waste form is an alloy consisting of stainless steel with 15 wt% zirconium and acts as a host for the immobilization of radioelements that remain with the spent fuel cladding hulls following their treatment using an electrometallurgical treatment process. The results presented here are from 14, 34 and 90-day immersion tests conducted at 90 °C. These tests show that the release of uranium is considerably higher than that of all other major elements present (Fe, Cr, Ni, Zr), but that release of all constituents is comparable to or lower than that for borosilicate glass.
Argonne National Laboratory is developing an electrometallurgical treatment for spent fuel from the experimental breeder reactor II. A product of this treatment process is a metal waste form that incorporates the stainless steel cladding hulls, zirconium from the fuel and the fission products that are noble to the process, i.e., Tc, Ru, Pd, Rh, Ag. The nominal composition of this waste form is stainless steel/15 wt% zirconium/ 1–4 wt% noble metal fission products. The behavior of technetium is of particular importance from a disposal point of view for this waste form due to its long half life, 2.14E5 years, and its mobility in groundwater. To address these concerns a limited number of spiked metal waste forms were produced containing Tc. These surrogate waste forms were then studied using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and selected leaching tests.
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