Effects of Surface Area-to-Solution Volume Ratio on Chemical Durability of Nuclear Waste Glasses

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Abstract
We report data on the relationship between nuclear waste glass durability, as measured by leachate concentrations and leach rates, and the ratio of glass surface area to solution volume, S/V. The study includes West Valley non-radioactive production glasses (SF6 and SF10), West Valley glasses containing U and Th designed at CUA (WVCM47, WVCM50, and WVCM59), Savannah River SRLTDS-131 glass, and Hanford waste glass HW-39 (for which existing literature data is used). While some of these glasses show departures of leachate concentrations from simple (S/V)t scaling others conform well. The departures are, in all cases, most evident at high values of S/V. It is therefore important, therefore to understand how glass composition determines which corrosion mechanism is dominant in order to assess the region of validity of extrapolations based on (S/V)t scaling. While leach rates show a general tendency to decrease with S/V and time, exceptions are evident for the less durable glasses which show minima and maxima in the S/V-dependence at fixed time.