West Valley glass product qualification durability studies: Effects of composition, redox state, heat treatment, and groundwater. [none]

Pacific Northwest Laboratory is examining the effects of composition, ferrous/ferric ratio (redox state), heat treatment, and groundwater on the chemical durability of a glass proposed for solidification of West Valley nuclear waste. Several experiments have been conducted, and preliminary results are given in this paper. The results of the experiments conducted to date indicate that waste glass is more durable in groundwater than in deionized water; also, durability is affected by isothermal and simulated canister cooling heat treatments. However, the durability of the waste glass is not strongly affected by the variation of glass redox state. Linear mixture models were fitted to the glass compositional variation data and validated. These models may be used to predict the effects of varying specific components on the reference glass durability within the defined composition region. 12 refs, 6 figs, 4 tabs.