Ceramic materials for nuclear waste storage*
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Date
1990
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Trans Tech Publications
Abstract
The operation of a nuclear power reactor producing 1300 MW of electrical power typically results in the accumulation of around 30 tonnes of spent fuel per annum. The fuel elements are intact but highly radioactive. Many of the isotopic species comprising the one tonne or so of fission products in the spent fuel are short-, medium-_ and/or long-lived beta- or gamma-emitters. In addition, various isotopes of the transuranic elements neptunium, plutonium, americium and curium - amounting typically to 250 kg in the same mass of fuel - have grown in by various nuclear reactions which follow the absorption of fast neutrons by “EU. Most of these transuranics are medium- to long-lived alpha-emitters.
Because of its initially very high and then eventually much lower but very long-lived radioactivity, the management of spent fuel is technically and socially challenging in both the short and long term. In the short term, i.e. for several decades, spent fuel is routinely stored in water-filled pools and later may be transferred to air-cooled dry storage vaults. Further management depends on whether or not the fuel is reprocessed to remove most of its reusable uranium and plutonium. Some spent fuel may eventually be disposed of as ‘waste’ in deep geological repositories without ever having been reprocessed. In the reprocessing option, the nuclear waste contains only the residual fission products, the transuranics neptunium, americium and curiumand a very small fraction of the uranium and plutonium. It is widely accepted that this high level waste (HLW) - which is, as produced, a corrosive nitrate solution - must be solidified, perhaps then stored in air-cooled vaults for up to 50-100 years and eventually disposed of by deep geological burial. It is also accepted that the solidified waste form will be, in the broad sense of the term, a ceramic material. The ceramic may be either crystalline, partly crystalline (glass—ceramic) ‘or non-crystalline (glass).
Description
* The ANSTO Synroc R&D project team won the Australian Ceramic Society Victorian Branch Ceramic Achievement Award in 1989 for significant achievement in Australian ceramic enterprise. This review paper covers the role of Synroc in the general context of ceramic materials for nuclear waste storage.
Physical copy of the journal held by ANSTO Library at DDD: 666/47.
Pre-print attached.
Keywords
High-level radioactive wastes, Radioactive waste disposal, Waste storage, Radioactive waste storage, Spent fuel storage, Spent fuels, Transuranium compounds, Nitrates, Uranium, Plutonium, Fast neutrons, Isotopic exchange, Fission products, Beta-plus decay, Beta-minus decay, Americium, Nuclear reactions
Citation
Reeve, K. D. (1990). Ceramic materials for nuclear waste storage*. Journal of the Australisian Ceramic Society, 25(1), 45-58.