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NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance.
This study was supported by Contract/Grant No. DE-FC01-04EW07022 between the National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. Department of Energy. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the organizations or agencies that provided support for the project.
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COMMITTEE ON WASTE FORMS TECHNOLOGY AND PERFORMANCE
MILTON LEVENSON (Chair), Bechtel International (retired), Menlo Park, California
RODNEY C. EWING (Vice Chair), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
JOONHONG AHN, University of California, Berkeley
MICHAEL J. APTED, Monitor Scientific, LLC, Denver, Colorado
PETER C. BURNS, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana
MANUK COLAKYAN, Dow Chemical Company, South Charleston, West Virginia
JUNE FABRYKA-MARTIN, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico
CAROL M. JANTZEN, Savannah River National Laboratory, Aiken, South Carolina
DAVID W. JOHNSON, Bell Labs (retired), Bedminster, New Jersey
KENNETH L. NASH, Washington State University, Pullman
TINA NENOFF, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Staff
KEVIN D. CROWLEY, Study Director
DANIELA STRICKLIN, Study Director (Through February 12, 2010)
SARAH CASE, Senior Staff Officer
TONI GREENLEAF, Administrative and Financial Associate
SHAUNTEÉ WHETSTONE, Senior Program Assistant
JAMES YATES, JR., Office Assistant
NUCLEAR AND RADIATION STUDIES BOARD
JAY DAVIS (Chair), Hertz Foundation, Livermore, California
BARBARA J. MCNEIL (Vice Chair), Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts
JOONHONG AHN, University of California, Berkeley
JOHN S. APPLEGATE, Indiana University, Bloomington
MICHAEL L. CORRADINI, University of Wisconsin, Madison
PATRICIA J. CULLIGAN, Columbia University, New York
ROBERT C. DYNES, University of California, San Diego
JOE GRAY, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California
DAVID G. HOEL, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston
HEDVIG HRICAK, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York
THOMAS H. ISAACS, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California
ANNIE B. KERSTING, Glenn T. Seaborg Institute, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California
MARTHA S. LINET, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland
FRED A. METTLER, JR., New Mexico VA Health Care System, Albuquerque
BORIS F. MYASOEDOV, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow
RICHARD J. VETTER, Mayo Clinic (retired), Rochester, Minnesota
RAYMOND G. WYMER, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (retired), Oak Ridge, Tennessee
Staff
KEVIN D. CROWLEY, Senior Board Director
SARAH CASE, Senior Program Officer
OURANIA KOSTI, Program Officer
TONI GREENLEAF, Administrative and Financial Associate
LAURA D. LLANOS, Administrative and Financial Associate
SHAUNTEÉ WHETSTONE, Senior Program Assistant
ERIN WINGO, Senior Program Assistant
JAMES YATES, JR., Office Assistant
Preface
Nuclear waste forms are at the center of a successful strategy for the cleanup and isolation of radioactive waste from the environment. Initially, the radioactivity is entirely contained in the waste form, which is the first barrier to the release of radionuclides, making an important contribution to the performance of the disposal system. Realizing that much of its work lies ahead, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (DOE-EM) recognized the potential importance of new waste forms that could offer enhanced performance and more efficient production and requested this study by the National Research Council.
The history of nuclear waste form development and evaluation stretches back more than 30 years. During that time there have been new ideas about the types of materials that could be used; innovations in the technologies for the production of these materials; new strategies for evaluating their performance in a geologic repository; and substantial advances in the relevant fields of materials science, geochemistry, processing technologies, and computational simulations. In this report, we attempt to summarize the advances in waste form science with the parallel advances in related fields.
Several important messages emerged from this study, including the following:
- The evaluation of waste form performance requires careful consideration of the near-field disposal environment. Only by matching the disposal environment to a waste form material’s properties can repository performance be optimized.
- Different materials respond to their disposal environments in different ways. “One shoe does not fit all.” One waste form may not be appropriate for all disposal environments. As an example, the optimal disposal environments for spent nuclear fuel and vitrified waste may be different.
- There have been important advances in processing technologies, some for other industrial applications. These new or modified technologies may find important applications in waste form production for nuclear applications.
- It is important to recognize the limits of current modeling. Unless the mechanisms of waste form degradation are understood, modeling results are best used for comparing options as opposed to determining quantitative values of risk.
We hope that this report stimulates renewed effort in this field and that the recommendations of the committee enable DOE-EM to progress efficiently in its remediation efforts.
Milt Levenson (Chair)
Rod Ewing (Vice Chair)
Acknowledgments
The successful completion of this report would not have been possible without the cooperation and assistance of a large number of organizations and individuals. The committee is especially grateful to the following individuals and organizations for providing logistical support, advice, and information for this study:
Department of Energy, Office of Environmental Management: Mark Gilberston, Yvette Collazo, Kurt Gerdes, Steve Schneider, Monica Regulbuto, Steve Krahn, and Daryl Haefner
International Atomic Energy Agency: Zoran Drace
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission: David Esh and Tim McCartin
Staff, contractors, and regulators at the Hanford Site: Paul Bredt, Tom Brouns, Kirk Cantrell, Nicholas Ceto III, Tom Crawford, Suzanne Dahl, Roy Gephart, Rob Gilbert, Douglas Hildebrand, Lori Huffman, Chris Kemp, Albert Kruger, Ken Krupka, Dean Kurath, Brad Mason, Matthew McCormick, Eric Pierce, Jake Reynolds, Terry Sams, John Vienna, Mike Weis, and James Wicks
Staff and contractors at the Idaho National Laboratory: Scott Anderson, Rod Arbon, Ken Bateman, Bruce Begg, Barbara Beller, Steve Butterworth, Jim Cooper, Ric Craun, Keith Farmer, Ray
Geimer, Jan Hagers, Thomas Johnson, Bill Lloyd, Keith Lockie, Ian Milgate, Joe Nenni, Marcus Pinzel, Jay Roach, Nick Soelberg, Mark Stubblefield, Mike Swenson, Terry Todd, and Jerry Wells
Staff and contractors at the Savannah River Site: Jeff Allison, Tom Cantey, Neil Davis, Ginger Dickert, Jim Folk, Eric Freed, Phil Giles, Sam Glenn, Jeff Griffen, Allen Gunter, James Marra, Sharon Marra, David Peeler, Laurie Posey, Jeff Ray, Jean Ridley, Mike Smith, Karthik Subramanian, George Wicks, Steve Wilkerson, and Cliff Winkler
Speakers at the November 2009 Workshop of Waste Forms Technology and Performance (see Appendix B): Bruce Begg (ANSTO), Claude Degueldre (Paul Sheerer Institute), Fred Glasser (Univ. Aberdeen), Berndt Grambow (SUBATECH), David Kosson (Vanderbilt Univ.), Werner Lutze (Catholic Univ.), Rod McCullum (NEI), Ian Pegg (Catholic Univ.), Mark Peters (ANL), Kath Smith (ANSTO), Carl Steefel (LBNL), Sergey Stefanovsky (SIA Radon), Peter Swift (SNL), Etienne Vernaz (CEA), and Bill Weber (PNNL)
The committee extends special thanks to the National Research Council staff who supported the work of this committee. Study director Daniela Strickland initiated the committee’s activities, made the arrangements for most of the site visits, and organized the international workshop on waste forms. Her early work for the committee shaped the content of the report. Shaunteé Whetstone handled the logistics for the committee’s meetings and site visits with great skill and attention to the needs of the committee. Kevin Crowley stepped in as the study director for the second half of the study period, even as he continued as the director of the Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board. Kevin provided essential guidance to the committee and worked tirelessly to assemble the final report. Kevin’s advice and questions to the committee greatly improved the content of the report, and without Kevin’s extraordinary effort, the report could not have been finished in a timely manner.
This report has been reviewed in draft form by individuals chosen for their diverse perspectives and technical expertise in accordance with procedures approved by the National Research Council’s Report Review Committee. The purpose of this independent review is to provide candid and critical comments that will assist the institution in making its published report as sound as possible and to ensure that the report meets institutional standards of objectivity, evidence, and responsiveness to the study charge. The content of the review comments and draft manuscript remain confi-
dential to protect the integrity of the deliberative process. We wish to thank the following individuals for their participation in the review of this report:
David Clarke, Harvard University
Allen Croff, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (retired)
Patricia Culligan, Columbia University
Delbert Day, Missouri University of Science and Technology
William Ebert, Argonne National Laboratory
Berndt Grambow, SUBATECH
Lisa Klein, Rutgers University
William Murphy, California State University, Chico
Alexandra Navrotsky, University of California, Davis
Michael Ojovan, The University of Sheffield
Barry Scheetz, Pennsylvania State University
Although the reviewers listed above have provided many constructive comments and suggestions, they were not asked to endorse the report’s conclusions or recommendations, nor did they see the final draft of the report before its release. The review of this report was overseen by Edwin Przybylowicz, Eastman Kodak Company (retired). Appointed by the Division on Earth and Life Studies, he was responsible for making certain that an independent examination of this report was carried out in accordance with institutional procedures and that all review comments were carefully considered. Responsibility for the final content of this report rests entirely with the authoring committee and the National Research Council.
Contents
1 Findings and Recommendations
4 Waste Processing and Waste Form Production
6 Waste Forms and Disposal Environments
7 Waste Form Performance in Disposal Systems
8 Legal and Regulatory Factors for Waste Form Performance
9 Possible Opportunities in Waste Form Science and Technology
A Biographical Sketches of Committee Members