Industrial vitrification processes for high level liquid wastes: potential and limitations

Research on solidifying concentrated fission product solutions was first undertaken in various countries more than thirty years ago. The initial work was mainly concerned with defining a suitable material, and later with developing processes to allow industrial scale fabrication. Various materials have been considered: calcinates, cermets, metal matrices, ceramics, glass, etc. For a number of reasons, however, glass has benefitted from the most significant development and one vitrification facility began industrial fabrication in 1978. A large number of vitrification techniques have been investigated, but only a few have been developed sufficiently to be considered feasible from a practical standpoint