Evaluation of final waste forms and recommendations for baseline alternatives to group and glass

Abstract

'This report has been r&duccd d h t l y from the best available copy. This report was prepared as an account of worlc sponsored by an agency of the United States Government. Neither the United States Government nor any agency thmof. nor any of their employees. makes any warranty, express or implied. or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness. or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed. or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial product, ~KICCSS, PREFACEGrout and glass waste forms are two materials around which baseline technologies have been built for the stabilization and solidification ( S / S ) of hazardous, radioactive, and mixed wastes. These materials have served these needs with varying degrees of success. Grout has been the most widely adapted waste form, being used to treat many types of wastes. On the other hand, the use of glass waste forms has been relatively limited, being essentially restricted to radioactive wastes.Some of the more troublesome of voluminous wastes within the Department of Energy (DOE) complex are those that contain the metals identified by the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) as hazardous. These metals are often problematic for grout-based and glass-based technologies, and the technical problems associated with these RCRA metals can be especially acute for mixed, hazardous, and radioactive wastes, such as those on the Oak Ridge Reservation (ORR). These considerations make the design of suitable criteria by which to assess and to regulate the S/S of such wastes suspect and, thereby, limit the development of better predictive capabilities of waste-form performance for grout and glass.This condition is exacerbated by the common perception that one or two waste forms are suitable for the wide variety of hazardous and mixed wastes that must be treated. Experience demonstrates otherwise.Indeed, some of the waste problems persist after many years of technological development for groutbased and glass-based waste forms. Hence, it is timely to examine the technical bases by which these waste forms perform, in order to gain perspective on their most limiting characteristics and remaining technological hurdles. Similarly, it is appropriate to identify and to understand the collective status of alternative materials and technologies. To a large extent, the advantages and disadvantages of potential alternatives, such as polyethylene, bitumens, sulfur, and crystalline ceramics, to name a few, are known only qualitatively and without a critical understanding of the inherent similarities and differences that each has relative to the two baseline materials, grout and glass.Moreover, current perceptions of these and other alternatives are based, in part, on the economic aspects of production and normally tend to neglect the economics of performance over the lifetime of storage and burial, including the costs demanded by the mandated monitoring o...