Determination of long-lived fission products and actinides in Savannah River Site HLW sludge and glass for waste acceptance |
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Authors: | N E Bibler W F Kinard W T Boyce C J Coleman |
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Institution: | (1) Savannah River Technology Center, Westinghouse Savannah River Co., 29808 Aiken, SC, USA;(2) Department of Chemistry, College of Charleston, 29424 Charleston, SC, USA |
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Abstract: | Savannah River Site (SRS) is immobilizing the radioactive, high-level waste sludge in Tank 51 into a borosilicate glass for
disposal in a geologic repository. A requirement for repository aceeptance is that SRS report the concentrations of certain
fission product and actinide radionuclides in the glass. This paper presents measurements of many of these concentrations
in both Tank 51 sludge and the final glass. The radionuclides were measured by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry
and α, β, and γ counting methods. Examples of the radionuclides are90Sr,137Cs,238U and,239Pu. Concentrations in the glass are 3.1 times lower due to dilution of the sludge with a nonradio-active glass forming frit
in the vitrification process. Results also indicated that in both the sludge and glass the relative concentrations of the
long lived fission products insoluble in caustic are in proportion to their yields from the fission of235U waste in the SRS reactors. This allowed the calculation of a fission yield scaling factor. This factor in addition to the
sludge dilution factor can be used to estimate concentrations of waste acceptance radionuclides that cannot be measured in
the glass. Examples of these radionuclides are79Se,93Zr, and107Pd. |
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