PNNL

Abstract

The efficient capture of radionuclides having long half-lives such as technetium-99 (99Tc), uranium-238 (238U), and iodine-129 (129I) is pivotal to prevent their transport into groundwater and/or release into the atmosphere. While different sorbents have been considered for capturing each of them, in the current work, a new nanostructured chalcogen-based aerogel, called a chalcogel, is shown to be very effective to capture ionic forms of 99Tc and 238U, as well as nonradioactive gaseous iodine (i.e., a surrogate for 129I), irrespective of the sorbent polarity. Some of the chalcogels performed better than others but the PtGeS sorbent performed the best with capture efficiencies of 98% and 99.4% for 99Tc and 238U, respectively. All sorbents showed >99% capture efficiency for iodine over the test duration. This unified sorbent would be an attractive option in environmental remediation for various radionuclides associated with legacy wastes from nuclear weapons production, wastes from nuclear power production, or potential future nuclear fuel reprocessing.