Decontamination and solidification treatment on spent liquid scintillation cocktail

Treatment of spent scintillation cocktail generated by analysis of radioactivity is one of important tasks for management of nuclear laboratories. This study proposed a procedure consists of adsorption of radioactivity and solidification of residual liquid wastes, and fundamental performance of each step was experimentally tested. Batch-wise adsorption showed excellent adsorption performance of Ni onto silica-based adsorbent, and chelate reaction was suggested as the adsorption mechanism by EXAFS analysis. Alkaline activate material successfully solidified the liquid waste, and TG/DTA and XRD analyses revealed that the organic compounds exist inside the matrix. Only 1 % of the loaded organic compounds were leaked from the matrix by a leaching test, and most of the organic compounds should be stably kept inside the matrix.

Automated summary

This study proposed a procedure for the treatment of spent scintillation cocktail, including adsorption of radioactivity and solidification of residual liquid wastes. Experimental results demonstrated excellent adsorption performance of Ni onto silica-based adsorbent through batch-wise adsorption, and chelate reaction was suggested as the adsorption mechanism by EXAFS analysis. Alkaline activate material successfully solidified the liquid waste, and analysis revealed the presence of organic compounds inside the matrix, with only 1% leakage by a leaching test.