Granulation of slags and metals after melt refining of contaminated metallic wastes

Melting under an oxidizing slag is an attractive method of decontaminating and reducing the volume of radioactively contaminated metal scrap. The contaminants are concentrated in a relatively small volume of slag, which leaves the metal essentially clean. A potential method of permanent disposal of the resulting slags (and metals if necessary) is to emplace them into deep shale by grout hydrofracture. Suspension of the slag and metal in grout mixtures requires that they be granular. The feasibility of size-reducing the slags and disintegrating the metals and subsequently incorporating them into grout mixtures was demonstrated. Various types of slags were crushed into particles smaller than 3 mm. We also melted several metals and water blasted them into coarse powders ranging in size from 0.05 to 3 mm. We found the crushed slags and the coarse metal powders to be suspendable in grout fluids, which indicates that they are probably disposable by shale hydrofracture. 4 figures