Hot isostatic pressing of ceramics, glass and glass-ceramics for immobilisation of intermediate-and high-level nuclear waste

Abstract

Different classes of nuclear wastes are briefly described, together with an idea of the required qualities of the processed waste for geological disposal. The main Synroc project at ANSTO these days is immobilisation of the upcoming ~5000L/yr intermediate-level waste from the production of the 99Mo radiopharmaceutical and this has been demonstrated inactively by hot isostatic pressing (HIP) a glass at full scale, together with showing its resilience to compositional variations of 10% for all main components, minor impurities and HIP temperature and pressure. Other work deals with HIP immobilisation of zirconolite-based glass-ceramics for surplus PuO2 immobilisation, glass-ceramics and ceramics for U-rich legacy ANSTO 99Mo intermediate-level and low-level waste, immobilisation of pyroprocessing fluoride-salt waste, spent power plant fuel, refractory glasses and CuI.