Chlorination technique for decontamination of radioactive concrete waste contaminated by Sr

The feasibility of the chlorination reaction as a decontamination technique for 90Sr-contaminated concrete waste was investigated via thermodynamic and experimental approaches. Thermodynamic calculations suggested that SrO reacts with chlorine prior to CaO, CaCO3, and MgO, while other oxides remain in their oxide forms. It was found experimentally that a temperature of at least 700 °C is required to convert more than 40% of SrO into SrCl2. A set of comparison experiments performed at various temperatures verified that CaO exhibits higher conversion ratios than those of SrO, while significantly lower ratios were observed with CaCO3.