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New material for nuclear waste disposal

02.11.2017

Experts from Rutgers University (USA) have developed an extremely effective "molecular trap" for radioactive iodides in spent nuclear fuel, which can be reused.

The trap resembles a tiny porous sponge. The inner surface of one gram of this substance can stretch and cover five basketball courts 28 by 15 meters. And if radioactive salts of hydroiodic acid get there, they remain there forever.

"This type of material has great potential because of its high porosity," says Professor Jing Li, one of the authors of the Nature Communications paper. "It has a much larger area than a sponge and can capture a lot of things."

During reprocessing, spent nuclear fuel releases radioactive molecular iodine and organic iodide as a gas that causes cancer and pollutes the environment. They typically use hard absorbents like quartz, alumina and zeolite, but they don't absorb very well and are expensive, Li says.

Therefore, scientists have developed a molecular trap from a highly porous metal-organic framework. Its performance surpasses the standards set by nuclear industry regulations, which require nuclear waste treatment plants to remove more than 99,9% of the radioactive iodides from spent nuclear fuel rods. It also copes with radioactive organic iodides better than all modern absorbents. For example, it is able to absorb methyl iodide at 150 degrees Celsius 340% more efficiently than the best industrial samples.

Another advantage of molecular traps is that methyl iodide can be removed from metal-organic frameworks to be recycled and reused. Modern industrial technologies do not allow this.

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