The leaching behavior of simulated HLW glass under repository condition

As the multibarrier system has been adopted to dispose HLW glass in geological formation in many countries, it was important to study the leaching behavior of vitrification under geological formation. This article describes the leaching behavior of simulated high level waste glass (90Nd/10), which can incorporate 16 wt.% simulated HLW in five kinds of geological media, such as granite, cement, bentonite, Fe3O4, etc. The durable experimental results show that the glass had less mass loss in granite and more mass loss in bentonite after a two-year leaching test. The SEM/XEDS analysis shows some element distributions on the leached specimen's surface, i.e., Na, Si and Mg elements were reduced on the specimen's surface, whereas Ba, Al, and Fe were enriched on the specimen's surface.