Abstract
It is pertinent to the safety case for geological disposal in the UK that the behaviour of vitrified wastes in proximity to cementitious materials is understood. In this study, vitrified simulant intermediate level nuclear waste (ILW) was subject to dissolution in a synthetic cement water solution to simulate disposal conditions. Results show that the presence of alkali / alkaline earth elements in the cementitious solution can be favourable, at least in the short-term, leading to lower dissolution rates associated with incorporation of these elements into the altered layer of the glass.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 131-140 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | MRS Advances |
| Volume | 5 |
| Issue number | 3-4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jan 2020 |
Funding
The UK research team are grateful to the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council for funding under grant awards EP/N017374/1, EP/G037140/1 and we wish to acknowledge the Henry Royce Institute for Advanced Materials (EPSRC award EP/R00661X/1) for the financial support and equipment access at Royce@Sheffield. This research was performed, in part, at the MIDAS Facility, at the University of Sheffield, which was established with support from the Department of Energy and Climate Change. The portions of the research conducted at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) were supported by the US Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) Tank Waste Management program. ORNL is operated by UT-Battelle, LLC for the US DOE under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725.