Abstract
Worldwide a great deal of the low and medium radioactive waste inventory is mixed with hazardous wastes and different non-combustibles. The path to treating these wastes historically has been to sort combustibles from non-combustibles and process them separately through incineration, supercompaction, cementation or other encapsulating technologies. Special attention has to be taken due to the presence of hazardous constituents. The cost and health physics exposure for sorting these types of mixed wastes and treating the separated streams in specialized infrastructure is not optimal and leaves a great potential for further optimization.
After several years of development, a commercially available high temperature treatment system has been developed and installed that treats heterogeneous low-level radioactive waste. High temperature plasma processing and unique torch design and operating features make it feasible to achieve a volume reduced, permanent, high integrity waste form while eliminating the personnel exposure and cost associated with sorting, characterizing and handling.
Plasma technology can also be used to recondition previous conditioned waste packages that don’t meet any longer the present acceptance criteria for final disposal. Plasma treatment can result in many cases in a substantial volume reduction, lowering the final disposal costs.
This paper covers the unique plasma centrifugal treatment principles and history. It also explains the roles of international partners that blend plasma, off gas treatment and nuclear expertise into one “best developed and available technology” (BDAT) for the treatment of problematic wastes.
Hydrogeologic factors in the selection of shallow land burial sites for the disposal of low-level radioactive waste
