Scientific Basis for Nuclear Waste Management XXXVIII: Volume 1744 MRS Proceedings Series

The Materials Research Society's Symposium EE, entitled 'Scientific Basis for Nuclear Waste Management XXXVIII', was held from 30 November to 5 December 2014, at the MRS Fall Meeting in Boston, Massachusetts. The symposium discussed the key scientific challenges for the safe and effective management of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste and provided an overview of the international research and waste management programs around the world. Waste forms and engineered barrier system properties, interactions between engineered and geological systems, radiation effects, chemistry and transport of radionuclides, and long-term predictions of repository performance were just some of the topics presented at the symposium by internationally renowned speakers and leading researchers in the field. The symposium attracted 85 abstracts. This proceedings volume contains 31 papers from the meeting.

Part I. Capture and Immobilization of Radionuclides: 1. Current status of immobilization techniques for geological disposal of radioactive iodine in Japan; 2. French studies on the development of potential conditioning matrices for iodine 129; 3. Effects of hydrosulfide and pH on iodine release from an alumina matrix solid confining silver iodide; 4. Evaluation of sorption behavior of iodide ions on calcium silicate hydrate and hydrotalcite; 5. Study of the release of the fission gases (Xe and Kr) and the fission products (Cs and I) under anoxic conditions in bicarbonate water; 6. Technetium getters to improve cast stone performance; 7. Selective ordering of pertechnetate at the interface between amorphous silica and water: a Poisson Boltzmann treatment; Part II. Development and Characterization of Waste Forms: 8. Pressureless sintering of sodalite waste-forms for the immobilization of pyroprocessing wastes; 9. MoO3 incorporation in alkaline earth aluminosilicate glasses; 10. Valence and local environment of molybdenum in aluminophosphate glasses for immobilization of high level waste from uranium-graphite reactor spent nuclear fuel reprocessing; 11. Copper valence and local environment in aluminophosphate glass-ceramics for immobilization of high level waste from uranium-graphite reactor spent nuclear fuel reprocessing; 12. Nepheline crystallization in high-alumina high-level waste glass; 13. Wet chemical and UV-Vis spectrometric iron speciation in quenched low and intermediate level nuclear waste glasses; 14. A sampling method for semi-quantitative and quantitative electron microprobe analysis of glass surfaces; 15. The void fraction of melter feed during nuclear waste glass vitrification; 16. Charge compensation in trivalent doped Ca3(SiO4)Cl2; 17. Effect of charge-balancing species on Sm3+ incorporation in calcium vanadinite; Part III. Corrosion Behavior of Materials: 18. Key phenomena governing HLW glass behavior in the French deep geological disposal; 19. Glass corrosion in the presence of iron-bearing materials and potential corrosion suppressors; 20. Uncertainty in the surface area of crushed glass in rate calculations; 21. About U(t) form of pH-dependence of glass corrosion rates at zero surface to volume ratio; 22. Glass degradation in performance assessment models; 23. Hierarchical modeling of HLW glass-gel-solution systems for stage 3 glass degradation; 24. Solution composition effects on the dissolution of a CeO2 analogue for UO2 and ThO2 nuclear fuels; Part IV. Storage and Disposal of Nuclear Waste: 25. Deep borehole disposal research: what have we learned from numerical modeling and what can we learn?; 26. Characteristics of cementitious paste for use in deep borehole disposal of spent fuel and high level wasteforms; 27. Physicochemical properties of vitrified forms for LILW generated from Korean nuclear power plant; 28. Release of 108Ag from irradiated PWR control rod absorbers under deep repository conditions; 29. Advancing the modelling environment for the safety assessment of the Swedish LILW repository at Forsmark; 30. Analysis of radionuclide migration with consideration of spatial and temporal change of migration parameters due to uplift and denudation; 31. Pore and mineral structure of rock using nano-tomographic imaging.