Accelerated Alpha Radiation Damage in a Ceramic Waste Form, Interim Results

Abstract

The submitted manuscript has been created by the Universi~of ChicSgo as Operator of Argonne National Laboratory VArgonne") under Contrad No. W-31-109-ENG-38 with the U.S. Depatiment of Energy. The U.S. Government retains for itself, and others ading on its behalf, a paid-up, nonexclusive. irrevo~ble worldwide ficense m said article to reproduce, prepare derivative wow, distribute copies to the pubfic, and Perform pub Iicly and display pubficly, by or on behalf of the Government.

Plutonium-238 alpha-decay damage study of the ceramic waste form.

“…Because the 238 Pu is localized in the PuO 2 phase, the majority of alpha-decay damage from the recoiled 234 U nucleus is confined to this phase. Lattice defect damage to the PuO 2 phase in the 238 Pu-loaded CWF has also been observed by high resolution TEM [31]. The significance of the unit-cell volume increase of the PuO 2 phase shown in Fig.…”

Alpha-Decay Radiation Damage Study of a Glass-Bonded Sodalite Ceramicwaste form

“…Plutonium is found primarily as PuO 2 in the glass areas between sodalite regions. A second Pu containing phase has been identified by TEM [4] as a tetragonal aluminosilicate phase, and a strongly faceted, needle-like phase containing Pu has also been observed. Neither of these last two Pu containing phases have been observed in the actual CWF that contains approximately 0.1 wt% Pu and their presence is possibly due to the greater Pu loading used in this study.…”

“…This multiyear study of alpha-decay damage involves periodic measurement of the 238 Puloaded CWF to determine changes to the materials chemical durability, physical characteristics and microstructure [4,5]. The testing includes chemical durability determined by the product consistency test (PCT), macroscopic volume changes measured by density analysis, phase composition and individual phase volume change measured by x-ray diffraction (XRD), and microscopic analysis of the waste form to monitor alteration to the microstructure and elemental composition by both scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM).…”