Advanced polymeric systems providing deactivation of different surfaces and soil from radioactive pollutions. Inorganic waste volume reduction with polymer

At the beginning of the project, two main problems were investigated. (1) Development of polymer systems for the decontamination of porous surfaces as strippable films. (2) Study of the behavior of polymer solutions in soils. Aspects are solidification agents for the top soil layers on fields, examinations of polymers solutions for the decontamination of radionuclides ¹³⁷Cs and ¹³⁴Cs from soils, and study of the effect of combining polymers with microscopic soil fungi (MSF) on radionuclide fixation. New polymeric systems for use as strippable films for the decontamination of ¹³⁷Cs and ¹³⁴Cs from porous surfaces were developed. The main conclusion from these investigations is that Cs cannot be easily removed from interlayer spaces. A redistribution of radioactive Cs in the radiation-contaminated soils influenced by polymers solutions is discovered. Increased activity of ¹³⁷Cs and ¹³⁴Cs in the upper layers of soils due to certain polymer solutions was observed. This phenomenon is due to the manifestation of the capillary movement of polymer solutions in soils. The results of the studies showed the principal possibility of using the revealed regularities of increasing ¹³⁷Cs and ¹³⁴Cs in the top layers of soils under the influence of polymer solutions to reduce the volume of contaminated soils removed from the fields. (N.T.)