Tailored ceramics. Chapter 5

In the light of the broad variation in US high-level waste (HLW) types and the uncertainties in future waste production, research on the Rockwell International Science Center has focussed on developing a generic technology for the consolidation of high-level wastes into polyphase ceramics. The basic approach has been to 'tailor' wste compositions with chemical additives so that upon consolidation a dense ceramic assemblage is formed that chemically binds the waste species into known phases. This chapter deals with tailored ceramics for current and future high-level waste compositions. Section 2 gives a historical review of the development of tailored ceramics. Section 3 deals with tailored ceramics designed for specific HLW compositions and with microstructure and phase development. Section 4 discusses chemical and physical properties of tailored ceramic waste forms. In section 5 the various processing steps involved in converting HLW to polycrystalline ceramic forms are described. (author). 159 refs.; 20 figs.; 14 tabs