Removal of 226Ra(II) from the uranium mine and pond waters

The aqueous systems arising from the radioactive ores processing or from uranium mine, generally require the application of purifying and especially of decontamination methods, according to the imposed limits of concentrations, recommended by International Standards. In Romania 0.088 Bq/L is considered to be the allowed limit, according to the Internal Standards. Flotation is a separation-concentration method which is largely applied in mineral processing but also as a decontamination method for the radioactive wastewaters especially when large volume of dilute solutions are involved. The purpose of the present paper is to evaluate and compare the effectiveness of the proposed radium coprecipitate-flotation in two variants. The decontamination method is based on a mixed precipitate formation followed by its separation from the liquid subjected to dissolved air flotation (DAF). The comparative study followed the quantitative estimation of criteria efficiencies, applied in order to attain high purification degree for the treated solutions. (orig.)