International Conference on the Management of Spent Fuel from Nuclear Power Reactors 2019: Learning from the Past, Enabling the Future

IMMOBILIZATION OF RARE EARTH WASTE STREAM FROM REPROCESSING USING VITRIFICATION

27 Jun 2019, 10:30

30m

Poster Track 5: Impacts of advanced nuclear energy systems on the back-end of the fuel cycle Track 5 Poster Session

Speaker

Dr Syazwani Mohd Fadzil (School of Applied Physics, Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia)

Description

Rare earth (RE) oxides are one of the waste streams generated during pyroprocessing of spent nuclear fuel. To immobilize RE oxides in glass, we explored an international simple glass (ISG), alkali borosilicate glass (ABG) and aluminoborosilicate glass (AG). The loading of RE oxides varied within 15 and 56.5 mass%. To characterize glass durability, we performed the 7-day Product consistency test (PCT), which showed good values for ISG and AG glasses. Crystallinity was investigated using optical microscope and x-ray diffraction (XRD). Various types of crystals were identified: ISG formed RE-borosilicate crystals with a single lanthanide and oxyapatite with a mixture of several RE oxides; ABG formed cerianite; and AG formed cerianite, RE-borosilicate, and Al-containing crystals. We have determined liquidus temperatures for crystals formed as functions of glass composition.

Peer reviewing

Paper

Accepted on 27 May 2019 by Amparo Gonzalez-Espartero

Paper files:

• Conference_Proceedings_Mohd_Fadzil_and_Hrma_corrected.docx