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NCSD provides communication among nuclear criticality safety professionals through the development of standards, the evolution of training methods and materials, the presentation of technical data and procedures, and the creation of specialty publications. In these ways, the division furthers the exchange of technical information on nuclear criticality safety with the ultimate goal of promoting the safe handling of fissionable materials outside reactors.
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Nuclear waste: Trying again, with an approach that is flexible and vague
The Department of Energy has started over on the quest for a place to store used fuel. Its new goal, it says, is to foster a national conversation (although this might better be described as many local conversations) about a national problem that can only be solved at the local level with a “consent-based” approach. And while the department is touting the various milestones it has already reached on the way to an interim repository, the program is structured in a way that means its success will not be measurable for years.
Dhanpat Rai, Richard G. Strickert, Gary L. McVay
Nuclear Technology | Volume 58 | Number 1 | July 1982 | Pages 69-76
Technical Paper | Radioactive Waste Managment | doi.org/10.13182/NT82-A32959
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To help predict concentrations of neptunium leached from nuclear waste repositories in geologic environments, the solubility of neptunium in a neptunium-doped borosilicate glass, which simulates a high-level waste glass, was investigated. The concentrations of neptunium in solutions contacting the crushed doped glass were found to be controlled by a neptunium solid phase that is similar to crystal-line(c)´NpO2 in solubility. Thus, the maximum concentration of the neptunium leached from this waste form can be predicted from the solubility of NpO2(c). This conclusion is based on similar neptunium concentrations in solutions contacting neptunium-doped glass, neptunium-doped glass plus NpO2(c), and NpO2(c) alone, under controlled redox potentials and a range of pH values. The quinhydrone used in this study was found to be a very effective redox buffer (the approximate pe + pH = 11.8). The predictions based on the thermodynamic data and the solvent extraction tests showed Np(V) to be the primary oxidation state in solution.
