Analysis of brine leachates from materials interface interactions tests 1

This paper discusses how the Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) technique was found to be very useful for analyzing brine leachates for the presence of chemical dopants from nuclear waste glasses. The standard addition method was used to determine the concentrations of La, Eu, Ce, Nd, Y, Pr, Zr, Th and U in samples from leach tests performed over a 12 month period beginning 12 months after initial test turn-on. By utilizing the low detection limit of the ICP-MS instrument for these elements values of the upper limits of leach rates from Aged SRL-Y, FR-JSSA and CUA-WV glasses were determined to be lower than 8 x 10-4 gm -2d-1. This is equivalent to leaching of less than 0.1 μm of total glass surface per year