Cesium and Strontium Contamination of Nuclear Plant Stainless Steel: Implications for Decommissioning and Waste Minimization.

ABSTRACT: Stainless steels can become contaminated with radionuclides at nuclear sites. Their disposal as radioactive waste would be costly. If the nature of steel contamination could be understood, effective decontamination strategies could be designed and implemented during nuclear site decommissioning in an effort to release the steels from regulatory control. Here, batch uptake experiments have been used to understand Sr and Cs (fission product radionuclides) uptake onto AISI Type 304 stainless steel under conditions representative of spent nuclear fuel storage (alkaline ponds) and PUREX nuclear fuel reprocessing (HNO₃). Solution (ICP-MS) and surface measurements (GD-OES depth profiling, TOF-SIMS, and XPS) and kinetic modeling of Sr and Cs removal from solution were used to characteri

SUBMITTER: Lang AR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6740182 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature