A research team at the University of Sheffield hopes its findings from a two-year study on cement will improve design efforts as the United Kingdom works to develop its Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) by 2040, according to a press release.
Led by Dr. Claire Corkhill, the researchers are analyzing the way in which cement, which is commonly used in the storage of nuclear waste, reacts with water over hundreds of years. The team is conducting the research at Diamond Light Source, a synchrotron science facility in the U.K. that has been describes as “a giant microscope” used to study the atomic and molecular nature of matter. Members of the team appeared Sunday in Washington, D.C., at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting.
“Armed with the knowledge that these phases form, and knowing how quickly, supports the use of our new cement material in the GDF,” Corkhill said in the statement. “We hope that these results will influence the design of the GDF and help improve its long term safety.”
According to the Diamond Light Source statement, Corkhill and her team have discovered that a new cement material for the GDF forms a number of mineral phases known to absorb highly radioactive elements, such as technetium-99.
“The pattern of peaks identified in cement essentially act as a fingerprint telling us which cement minerals are present,” Corkhill said in the statement. “The really exciting thing about using the [long-duration experiment] facility is that we are able to obtain very high resolution, time resolved patterns, something that is not possible using a normal laboratory instrument.”
