Study of sorption cesium, plutonium and americium on clay minerals

Abstract

Performance assessment of radioactive waste disposal requires modelling of long-term migration of radionuclides through the engineered barriers and the geological environment. In order to obtain realistic sorption data sets for safety relevant radionuclides present in cement (concrete) based near surface repository, some preliminary studies were carried out. Batch sorption experiments were conducted with two clay samples to determine Kd values of Cs, Pu and Am under a wide range of geochemical conditions. Iron speciation was determined using Mössbauer spectrometry.