PNNL

Abstract

The behavior of glasses with a large number of components, such as waste glasses, is not more complex than the behavior of simple glasses. On the contrary, the presence of many components restricts the composition region of these glasses in a way that allows approximating composition-property relationships by linear functions. This has far-reaching practical consequences for formulating nuclear waste glasses. On the other hand, processing high-level and low-activity waste glasses presents various problems, such as crystallization, foaming, and salt segre-gation in the melter. The need to decrease the settling of solids in the melter to an acceptable level and to maximize the rate of melting presents major challenges to processing technology. However, the most important property of the glass product is its chemical durability, a somewhat vague concept in lieu of the assessment of the glass resistance to aqueous attack while the radioactivity decays over tens of thousands of years.