Treatment and conditioning of radioactive wastes

From the time at which they are generated until they are disposed of, radioactive wastes undergo a process of conditioning that depends fundamentally on their physical-chemical and radiological characteristics.

Liquid wastes

Liquid wastes are segregated on the basis of their aqueous or organic condition.

They are subsequently treated using physical or chemical methods in order to reduce their contamination and volume.

Among the physical methods used are filtration, centrifuging and evaporation. The most habitually used chemical methods are precipitation and ion exchange.

Most wastes have to go through several processes before decontamination achieves the levels sought.

Finally, they have to be solidified, since this is the safest way to transport and store them. To achieve this they are uniformly mixed with concrete, mortar or cement.

Solid wastes

Solid wastes are segregated depending on their contamination and their physical-chemical properties. The main objective is to reduce the volume to be treated. Decontamination, chopping, crushing and compacting techniques are used to achieve this. This last technique reduces the initial volume by up to 30%.

Decontamination is performed using different processes, such as flushing with pressurised water, chemical baths, etc.

The wastes are subsequently immobilised into a block with cement.

Organic wastes are incinerated in order to allow them to be solidified, the drum subsequently being blocked with the resulting ashes and mortar.