Waste management in a Hot Laboratory of Japan Atomic Energy Agency, 1; Overview and activities in chemical processing facility

野村 和則; 小木 浩通*; 中原 将海; 渡部 創; 柴田 淳広

International Journal of Nuclear and Quantum Engineering (Internet), 13(5), p.209 - 212, 2019/00

Chemical Processing Facility of Japan Atomic Energy Agency is a basic research field for advanced back-end technology developments with using actual high-level radioactive materials. Most of them were treated properly and stored in the liquid waste vessel, but some were not treated and remained at the experimental space as a kind of legacy nuclear waste, which we must treat in safety and dispose if we continue research activities in the facility. Under this circumstance, we launched a collaborative research project called the STRAD project, which stands for Systematic Treatment of Radioactive liquid waste for Decommissioning, in order to develop the treatment processes for wastes of the nuclear research facility. In this project, decomposition methods of certain chemicals, which have been directly solidified without safety pretreatment but may cause a troublesome phenomenon, is developing and a prospect that it will be able to decompose in the facility by simple method. And solidification of aqueous or organic liquid wastes after the decomposition has been studied by adding cement or coagulants. Furthermore, we treated experimental tools of various materials with making an effort to stabilize and to compact them before the package into the waste container. It is expected to decrease the number of transportation of the solid waste and widen the operation space. The project is expected to contribute beneficial waste management outcome that can be shared world widely.