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U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Technetium partitioning from Hanford waste tanks 101SY and 103SY

Conference ·
OSTI ID:370553
; ;  [1]
  1. Los Alamos National Lab., NM (United States); and others

Technetium-99 is a major fission product resulting from the fission of plutonium or uranium. An estimated 2000 Kg of technetium is being stored in the Hanford waste tanks. As TcO{sub 4}{sup -}, technetium is a very mobile species in the environment. This characteristic, along with its long half-life, 213,000 years, causes technetium to be a major contributor to die long-term risk associated with storage of low level waste (LLW) forms. One option for mitigating this hazard is to separate technetium from LLW streams and vitrify it with high level waste (HLW) components. Anion exchange is the baseline technology for technetium separation. Technetium partitioning is successfully accomplished with the Reillex{trademark}-HPQ resin. Distribution coefficients have been obtained for pertechnetate from 101SY and 103SY simulants and actual waste samples as a function of time and temperature. Studies were done in both batch and column mode.

OSTI ID:
370553
Report Number(s):
CONF-960376--
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English