Immobilising nuclear waste
19 Dec 2001
A £1.2 million research venture between BNFL and the University of Cambridge is to investigate the encapsulation of actinides in ceramics.
The five-year project will see BNFL invest £1/2 million in the University's Department of Earth Sciences. Additional research funds have been earmarked by the Cambridge-MIT Institute (CMI) to link research in Cambridge with that at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Research into the use of ceramics for the immobilisation of actinides is seen as an essential part of BNFL's waste immobilisation strategy. This will augment the currently used technologies of vitrification (i.e. storing in glass) and cementation (i.e. storing in cement) in the treatment of nuclear waste to allow for long-term storage.
These technologies are seen as vital for the management of used nuclear fuel and for the decommissioning and clean up of nuclear facilities throughout the world.
The project's inception began when BNFL research specialists met researchers from the Department of Earth Sciences to explore the use of their expertise in the evaluation of mineral phases as possible hosts for immobilising long lived radioactive species.
