Chemical durability assessment of enhanced low-activity waste glasses through EPA method 1313
- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
- Jfa-RC Technical Services, LLC., Richland, WA (United States)
- Vanderbilt Univ., Nashville, TN (United States)
- Univ. of Sheffield (United Kingdom)
- USDOE Office of River Protection (ORP), Richland, WA (United States)
In this work, we report the progress of the Glass Leaching Assessment for Durability (GLAD) program on the implementation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Leaching Environmental Assessment Framework pH-dependent leach test (EPA Method 1313) to low-activity nuclear waste (LAW) glasses. The GLAD program seeks to develop new strategies to understand the chemical durability of nuclear waste glasses for the disposal in near-surface conditions. A series of 16 high-waste loading LAW glasses, currently under development, were selected using machine learning methods to study the corrosion behavior using EPA Method 1313. Reacted glass powders were examined using scanning electron microscopy and the eluate compositions were examined using inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectroscopy. Compositional modeling was used to fit the measured elemental releases from EPA Method 1313. The compositional models demonstrated that elements such as Si reduce elemental release while B can increase elemental release (consistent with elemental modeling of the Product Consistency Test and Vapor Hydration Test) while other elements, such as Fe, exhibit pH-dependent behavior. The amount of acid added during the EPA testing was found to significantly impact the observed result, which was only apparent after preforming the present matrix study. The overall titration curves were able to be compositionally modeled for future process optimization.
- Research Organization:
- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States); USDOE Office of River Protection (ORP), Richland, WA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Environmental Management (EM)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC05-76RL01830
- OSTI ID:
- 1983973
- Report Number(s):
- PNNL--32663; EWG-RPT-038
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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