Savannah River Laboratory quarterly report: waste management, January--March 1976

The conceptual process for solidification of Savannah River Plant liquid wastes to glass monoliths was improved to use spray dryers discharging directly to ceramic continuous melters, instead of batch-blending dry sludge powder with glass-forming frit for in-can melting. Calculations indicate that the centerline temperature of concrete waste forms air-cooled by natural convection would not exceed 1300C during normal storage conditions in the conceptual Retrievable Storage Facility. A program to compute radial heat flow from a solid cylinder during an exothermic chemical reaction has been developed and applied to the hydration of the ''Lumnite'' cement proposed for fixation of high-activity plant waste. Final scale-up tests of the ion-exchange process for removing 137Cs from waste supernate showed that changes in the column aspect ratio (length/diameter) do not significantly affect cesium removal. Laboratory tests show that the volume of neutralized solids from the five largest plant waste streams can be reduced approximately 30 percent by total denitration of free nitric acid and partial denitration of metal nitrates with formic acid