Waste Forms Technology and Performance: Final Report (2011)

Waste Forms Technology
and Performance

FINAL REPORT

Committee on Waste Forms Technology and Performance


Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board
Division of Earth and Life Studies

NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL
                          OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES

THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS

Washington, D.C.

www.nap.edu

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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:

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.

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Contents

Executive Summary

1     Findings and Recommendations

2     Background and Study Task

3     Waste Forms

4     Waste Processing and Waste Form Production

5     Waste Form Testing

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

Appendixes

A     Biographical Sketches of Committee Members

B     Workshop on Waste Form Technology and Performance

C     Interim Report

D     Glossary

E     Acronyms

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