Properties of plutonium-containing colloids released from glass-bonded sodalite nuclear waste form

In glass-bonded sodalite, which is the ceramic waste form (CWF) to immobilize radioactive electrorefiner salt from spent metallic reactor fuel, uranium and plutonium are found as 20-50 rim (U,Pu)O-2 particles encapsulated in glass near glass-sodalite phase boundaries. In order to determine whether the (U,Pu)O-2 affects the durability of the CWF, and to determine release behavior of uraniurn and Plutonium during CWF corrosion, tests were conducted to measure the release of matrix and radioactive elements from crushed CWF samples into water and the properties of released plutonium. Released colloids have been characterized by sequential filtration of test solutions followed by elemental analysis, dynamic light scattering, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and X-ray absorption spectroscopy. This paper reports the composition, size, and agglomeration of these colloids. Significant amounts of colloidal, amorphous aluminosilicates and smaller amounts of colloidal crystalline (U,Pu)O-2 were identified in test solutions. The normalized releases of uranium and plutonium were significantly less than the normalized releases of matrix elements, i.e., the CWF retains these radionuclides well.