Degradation Of Cementitious Materials Associated With Saltstone Disposal Units
The Saltstone facilities at the DOE Savannah River Site (SRS) stabilize and dispose of low-level radioactive salt solution originating from liquid waste storage tanks at the site. The Saltstone Production Facility (SPF) receives treated salt solution and mixes the aqueous waste with dry cement, blast furnace slag, and fly ash to form a grout slurry which is mechanically pumped into concrete disposal cells that compose the Saltstone Disposal Facility (SDF). The solidified grout is termed “saltstone”. Cementitious materials play a prominent role in the design and long-term performance of the SDF. The saltstone grout exhibits low permeability and diffusivity, and thus represents a physical barrier to waste release. The waste form is also reducing, which creates a chemical barrier to waste release for certain key radionuclides, notably Tc-99. Similarly, the concrete shell of an SDF disposal unit (SDU) represents an additional physical and chemical barrier to radionuclide release to the environment. Together the waste form and the SDU compose a robust containment structure at the time of facility closure. However, the physical and chemical state of cementitious materials will evolve over time through a variety of phenomena, leading to degraded barrier performance over Performance Assessment (PA) timescales of thousands to tens of thousands of years. Previous studies of cementitious material degradation in the context of low-level waste disposal have identified sulfate attack, carbonation influenced steel corrosion, and decalcification (primary constituent leaching) as the primary chemical degradation phenomena of most relevance to SRS exposure conditions. In this study, degradation time scales for each of these three degradation phenomena are estimated for saltstone and concrete associated with each SDU type under conservative, nominal, and best estimate assumptions. The nominal value (NV) is an intermediate result that is more probable than the conservative estimate (CE) and more defensible than the best estimate (BE). The combined effects of multiple phenomena are then considered to determine the most limiting degradation time scale for each cementitious material. Degradation times are estimated using a combination of analytic solutions from literature and numerical simulation codes provided through the DOE Cementitious Barriers Partnership (CBP) Software Toolbox (http://cementbarriers.org). For the SDU 2 design, the roof, wall, and floor components are projected to become fully degraded under Nominal conditions at 3866, 923, and 1413 years, respectively. For SDU 4 the roof and floor are estimated to be fully degraded under Nominal conditions after 1137 and 1407 years, respectively; the wall is assumed to be fully degraded at time zero in the most recent PA simulations. Degradation of these concrete barriers generally occurs from combined sulfate attack and corrosion of embedded steel following carbonation. Saltstone is projected to degrade very slowly by decalcification, with complete degradation occurring in excess of 200,000 years for any SDU type. Complete results are provided.
- Research Organization:
- Savannah River Site (SRS), Aiken, SC (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC09-08SR22470
- OSTI ID:
- 1077824
- Report Number(s):
- SRNL-STI-2013-00118; TRN: US1400059
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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