Research Priorities for Nuclear Waste Isolation
- PDF / 447,439 Bytes
- 9 Pages / 420.48 x 639 pts Page_size
- 18 Downloads / 229 Views
RESEARCH PRIORITIES FOR NUCLEAR WASTE ISOLATION Summary prepared by T.H. Pigford, (panel chairman), University of California, Berkeley Brief presentations made by panel members are as follows:
D. E. GORDON, E. I. du Pont de Nemours, Savannah River Laboratory, USA
Hr. Gordon's comments are specific to defense waste only. The research priorities center around: 1. Improvements in the technology for immobilizing high-level waste. For waste vitrification, these improvements include lower corrosiveness, less crystal formation, lower volatility, reduction in glass cracking, increased life of glass-melter, nondestructive testing methods, and remote handling techniques. 2. Better understanding of the performance of the waste package components in the repository environment. This requires additional research in the areas of repository characterization, the mechanisms of waste form corrosion, radionuclide migration in geologic media, predictive models for projecting waste system performance.. and synergistic effects of waste system components. 3. Confirmation of waste disposal risk assessments and their establishment as the technical basis for regulatory criteria. 4. Research priorities for transuranic (TRU) waste isolation are focused on the development of processing technologies for immobilization and of improved instrumentation for classification and nondestructive examination.
H. C. BURKHOLDER, Battelle PNL, Richland, WA, USA
1. We need technically-based performance requirements for both waste products and treatment processes to prevent an endless sequence of product and process development activities. 2. We need to demonstrate the operability and maintainability of the liquidfed ceramic melter for vitrifying nuclear wastes under pilot-scale, radioactive conditions as the final step to full-scale application. 3. We need to bring transuranic waste treatment technology up to the same level of development as high-level waste treatment technology. 4. We need to test waste products under the dynamic conditions of transportation, storage and disposal and develop models which describe both the internal and
890 external processes by which radionuclides are transported from waste forms. 5.
We need to develop techniques to assure waste product quality without destructive inspection.
6. Finally, we do not need to perform research and development on either longlived waste containers or on waste forms with low release rates. Waste container need not last longer than length of time desired for retrievability (0 to 100 years).
Fractional release rates below 10-2 to 10-4 per yr are not
required. F.
FEATES,
Dept.
of Environment, U.K.
1. The priority rests with satisfying the public on the acceptability of a disposal method.
We must beware that peripheral research is not justified by
the disposal programme,
thereby suggesting to the public that problems are
much further from a solution than is
actually the case.
2.
We must now demonstrate to the public the capability of geologic disposal.
3.
The research programme sh
Data Loading...
