Abstract

Radioactive wastes arising from the nuclear industry need to be immobilised to enable their safe storage and (eventual) disposal. Vitrification of such wastes offers some major benefits, including significant volume reduction which reduces storage and disposal costs. In the UK vitrification of high level wastes has been implemented and vitrification is being considered for a range of intermediate level wastes arising from decommissioning; I will briefly review some of our work in this area including the development of glasses for the vitrification of sludges and ion exchange resins. Understanding the interactions of vitrified wasteforms with water over very extended timescales is an important aspect of such development. Therefore I will also consider the insights we gain from (accelerated) testing, using both powder and monolith tests, of vitrified products, as well as comparisons with the behaviour of natural and anthropogenic analogue glasses.

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