The Solidification of Radioactive Sludge Powder Based on Metallic Oxide and Ferro Frit Powder by Hot Isostatic Pressing

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The mixing powder of vitrification material and metallic oxide sludge was solidified by hot isostatic press method and was tested to check whether the solidified waste disposal acceptance criteria were met or not. From various contaminated tank in nuclear power plants, and other nuclear energy facilities, radioactive sludge based on metallic oxide can be generated. The most of tank consist of stainless steel can be oxidated by the long-term exposure on oxygen and moisture, and then can be made sludge layer based on metallic oxide on the inner wall of contaminated tank. Radioactive sludge waste should be solidified and disposed. Melting and hardening is the most basic method for solidification. The melting points of metallic oxide of stainless steel as Fe3O4, NiO, Cr2O3 are 1597, 1955, 2435, respectively. Those are very high temperature. To melt these metallic oxides, a furnace capable of raising the temperature to a very high temperature is required, which requires a lot of thermal energy, which may lead to an increase in disposal cost. Therefore, it is necessary to lower the melting point and solidify non-melted metallic oxide powder by adding vitrifying material powder as Na2O, SiO2, B2O3. The more vitrification material is added, the easier it is to solidify the sludge based on metallic powder at a low temperature, but there is a problem in that the total waste volume increases due to the addition of vitrification material. In this study, the mixing ratio and temperature conditions that can fix the sludge while adding a minimum amount of vitrification material will be confirmed. Mixing ratio conditions of the vitrification material and sludge powder are 10:90, 15:85, 20:80, 25:75. To fix the metallic oxide sludge by melting only the vitrification material without completely melting the metallic oxide, compression by external pressure is required. Therefore, the HIP (Hot Isostatic Pressing) method was used to solidify the metallic oxide sludge by simultaneously heating and pressurizing it. Because the softening points of most of vitrification based on Na2O, SiO2, B2O3 are ranged from 800 to 1000, temperature conditions are 800, 900, 1000. Since the compressive strength for disposing of the solidified materials was 3.4 MPa, the maximum pressure condition was set to 5000 psi (about 34 MPa), which is 10 times 3.4 MPa. And optimal mixing ratio, temperature, pressure conditions that meet the solidified waste disposal acceptance criteria will be found.