Uranium waste engineering research at the Ningyo-Toge Environmental Engineering Center of JAEA

Umezawa, Katsuhiro ; Morimoto, Yasuyuki; Nakayama, Takuya  ; Nakagiri, Toshio  

In December 2016, the Ningyo-toge Environmental Engineering Center of Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA Ningyo-toge) announced new concept of "Uranium and Environmental Research Platform". As part of the concept, uranium waste engineering research are now undergoing. The objective of the research is to establish the processing technology for safely and reasonable disposal of uranium waste. In particular, estimation of the amount of uranium and harmful substances and development of technologies to reduce their concentration in the waste to the permissive level for the disposal in shallow ground disposal are needed. We are now developing the technologies to reduce the concentration of uranium and harmful substances shown below. (1) Survey on uranium inventory. Uranium waste is now stored in 10-odd thousands of 200 L drums. We are surveying amount and chemical form of uranium in the drums. (2) Development of decontamination technology of metal and concrete waste. We are investigating decontamination methods for metals and concrete contaminated with uranium. (3) Development of technologies to remove, detoxify and fix the harmful substances. We are surveying the types and amounts of harmful substances in waste. In addition, we are investigating the method to remove, detoxify, and fix harmful substances. (4) Measurement technology of uranium radioactivity. We are investigating and examining ways to improve the quantitative accuracy of measurement and shorten the measurement time. (5) Development of uranium removal technology from sludge. We are investigating new processing method to remove uranium from sludge which is applicable for several kind of sludge. The results of these technological developments and environmental research will be reflected to "small-scale field test" and "disposal demonstration test" which are planned for demonstration of the uranium waste disposal technology.