Stability of Cement-Glass Packages Containing Sodium Borate Salt Generated from Pressurized Water Reactor Power Plants

Abstract

A new solidification technique using cement-glass, which is a mixture of sodium silicate and cement, was studied for solidification of sodium borate salt of liquid waste generated from pressurized water reactor plants. When the sodium borate salt was solidified with the cement-glass, the resulting package contained eight times more sodium borate than was found in cement because it did not interact with sodium borate. The leaching ratio of cesium ion from the cement-glass package was one-tenth that of cement. Its low leaching ratio was due to the high cesium adsorption ability of cement-glass. The ratio could be theoretically evaluated by considering the cesium adsorption-desorption equilibrium.