2 research outputs found
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Overview on backfill materials and permeable reactive barriers for nuclear waste disposal facilities.
A great deal of money and effort has been spent on environmental restoration during the past several decades. Significant progress has been made on improving air quality, cleaning up and preventing leaching from dumps and landfills, and improving surface water quality. However, significant challenges still exist in all of these areas. Among the more difficult and expensive environmental problems, and often the primary factor limiting closure of contaminated sites following surface restoration, is contamination of ground water. The most common technology used for remediating ground water is surface treatment where the water is pumped to the surface, treated and pumped back into the ground or released at a nearby river or lake. Although still useful for certain remediation scenarios, the limitations of pump-and-treat technologies have recently been recognized, along with the need for innovative solutions to ground-water contamination. Even with the current challenges we face there is a strong need to create geological repository systems for dispose of radioactive wastes containing long-lived radionuclides. The potential contamination of groundwater is a major factor in selection of a radioactive waste disposal site, design of the facility, future scenarios such as human intrusion into the repository and possible need for retrieving the radioactive material, and the use of backfills designed to keep the radionuclides immobile. One of the most promising technologies for remediation of contaminated sites and design of radioactive waste repositories is the use of permeable reactive barriers (PRBs). PRBs are constructed of reactive material(s) to intercept and remove the radionuclides from the water and decontaminate the plumes in situ. The concept of PRBs is relatively simple. The reactive material(s) is placed in the subsurface between the waste or contaminated area and the groundwater. Reactive materials used thus far in practice and research include zero valent iron, hydroxyapatite, magnesium oxide, and others. As the contaminant moves through the reactive material, the contaminant is either sorbed by the reactive material or chemically reacts with the material to form a less harmful substance. Because of the high risk associated with failure of a geological repository for nuclear waste, most nations favor a near-field multibarrier engineered system using backfill materials to prevent release of radionuclides into the surrounding groundwater
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Containment of uranium in the proposed Egyptian geologic repository for radioactive waste using hydroxyapatite.
Currently, the Egyptian Atomic Energy Authority is designing a shallow-land disposal facility for low-level radioactive waste. To insure containment and prevent migration of radionuclides from the site, the use of a reactive backfill material is being considered. One material under consideration is hydroxyapatite, Ca{sub 10}(PO{sub 4}){sub 6}(OH){sub 2}, which has a high affinity for the sorption of many radionuclides. Hydroxyapatite has many properties that make it an ideal material for use as a backfill including low water solubility (K{sub sp}>10{sup -40}), high stability under reducing and oxidizing conditions over a wide temperature range, availability, and low cost. However, there is often considerable variation in the properties of apatites depending on source and method of preparation. In this work, we characterized and compared a synthetic hydroxyapatite with hydroxyapatites prepared from cattle bone calcined at 500 C, 700 C, 900 C and 1100 C. The analysis indicated the synthetic hydroxyapatite was similar in morphology to 500 C prepared cattle hydroxyapatite. With increasing calcination temperature the crystallinity and crystal size of the hydroxyapatites increased and the BET surface area and carbonate concentration decreased. Batch sorption experiments were performed to determine the effectiveness of each material to sorb uranium. Sorption of U was strong regardless of apatite type indicating all apatite materials evaluated. Sixty day desorption experiments indicated desorption of uranium for each hydroxyapatite was negligible