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

Technetium oxidation state adjustment for Hanford waste processing

Conference ·
OSTI ID:560138
;  [1]; ;  [2]
  1. Los Alamos National Lab., NM (United States)
  2. Texas State Univ., Commerce, TX (United States)
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 TcO4-, technetium is 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 the long-term risk associated with storage of low level waste forms. One option for mitigating this hazard is to separate technetium and vitrify it with high level waste components. Separation technologies rely on TcO4- being present in the waste stream. We have demonstrated that as much as 70% of the technetium in the Hanford supernates is not TcO4-. We will discuss this information and the feed adjustment chemistry we are developing to set technetium to TcO4- for processing.
OSTI ID:
560138
Report Number(s):
CONF-970443--
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English