Activated carbon additives for technetium immobilization in bentonite-based engineered barriers for radioactive waste repositories

Highlights: • Activated carbon quantitatively sorb Tc under oxidizing conditions. • Tc isn't leached from the activated carbon during treatment by H₂O, NH₂OH and 6 M HCl. • Natural bentonite clay with activated carbon additives has high Tc sorption ability. • Clay with carbon additive is a promising material for Tc immobilization in RW sites. Safe disposal of nuclear waste in a geologic repository will rely on natural geologic features and engineered barriers to greatly retard the movement of radionuclides from the repository. Clay minerals including bentonite are effective in retarding the migration of many radionuclides, but are ineffective for anionic radionuclides, of which pertechnetate is of particular concern owing to its relatively long half-life and the lack of natural isotopes that dilute it. Activated carbon is proposed as an additive material for reducing pertechnetate mobility in the nearfield. Activated carbon materials of different origins quantitatively sorb pertechnetate from aqueous solution under oxidizing conditions during the first day of contact, and sequential extraction showed that 73 % of this technetium is in the strongly bound fraction. X-ray photoelectron spectra (XPS) and extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) spectra both demonstrated that no reduction of technetium occurred in the studied systems. The interaction of technetium with a composite material consisting of bentonite and activated carbon was studied at the first time. Effective technetium sorption was shown, with distribution coefficients (Kd) up to 740 cm^3. g⁻¹.