Decontamination and solidification of liquid radioactive waste using natural zeolite

Abstract

This study is based on evaluation of solidification methods for low-level radioactive liquid using natural zeolite. In classical method, LLW is decontaminated using zeolite and after the process spent zeolite becomes radioactive waste. After decontamination process, zeolite waste is solidified using cement, sand and water. In this method; liquid radioactive waste was used instead of water, natural zeolite was used instead of sand/aggregate and cement was used for binding the mixture in solidification process. In this study, leaching properties and strength of the solidified waste form were investigated for both techniques. Effect of temperature on the radionuclide adsorption of the zeolite was determined to optimize the waste solution temperature for the plant scale operations. In addition, the effect of pH on the radionuclide uptake of the zeolite was determined to optimize the waste solution's pH for the plant scale operations. The advantages of this method used for the processing of LLW were discussed in this paper.