The work reported here was funded by Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS). Dave Swanberg with WRPS led the effort and provided both programmatic guidance and technical input to the project team. These screening tests were very laboratory intensive. At Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Ben Williams was instrumental in preparing the Cast Stone specimens and conducting the leach tests. Don Rinehart prepared the simulants. Keith Geiszler, Steve Baum, Igor Kutnyakov, Christian Iovin, and Dennesse Smith analyzed the many samples. Stan Pitman, Mike Dahl, and Karl Mattlin conducted the compressive strength measurements. At Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL), Vickie Williams was the cornerstone of the preparation and measurement of the Cast Stone fresh properties, Kim Wyszynski and Vickie Williams prepared the simulants, and David Best, Whitney Riley, and Beverly Wall performed the analyses. John Harris with LaFarge graciously provided the dry blend ingredients sourced from the northwest.

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Savannah River Remediation has requested the Savannah River National Laboratory to develop and produce three new sludge simulants that are resistant to oxalic acid dissolution and contain RCRA hazardous metals for use in additional planned Enhanced Chemical Cleaning process tests. The results of the simulant development are:  The development and production of lab-scale quantities of the Purex, HM and Blend simulants has been completed.  The hazardous metals in the new simulants are mercury, silver, barium, cadmium, chromium and lead with the mercury present at HM waste levels in all three simulants.  The resistance of the three simulants to oxalic acid is similar to or more resistant than actual radioactive waste in prior lab and plant tests.  The minimum amount of one weight percent oxalic acid required to adjust the pH of the three new simulants was determined to be from 12 to 16.4 times the volume of decanted simulant.  At the minimum acid quantity, the simulant pH will tend to drift above pH 2 due to the slow reaction kinetics of the acid reactive sludge solids. Addition of more acid over time will be required to maintain a pH below 2.  Sufficient quantities of each simulant were prepared for use in corrosion testing as requested by SRR. Any additional improvement in the simulant properties with respect to actual waste using the approach applied to the current simulants will require more detailed information about the specific compounds present in actual radioactive sludge. Such information may provide alternative choices for the mineral phases that could be used in the production of simulants to represent the sludge heels in high level waste tanks to be closed. v SRNL-STI-2010-00170 Revision 0