Chlorination technique for decontamination of radioactive concrete waste contaminated by Sr

The feasibility of the chlorination reaction as a decontamination technique for ⁹⁰Sr-contaminated concrete waste was investigated via thermodynamic and experimental approaches. Thermodynamic calculations suggested that SrO reacts with chlorine prior to CaO, CaCO₃, and MgO, while other oxides remain in their oxide forms. It was found experimentally that a temperature of at least 700 °C is required to convert more than 40% of SrO into SrCl₂. A set of comparison experiments performed at various temperatures verified that CaO exhibits higher conversion ratios than those of SrO, while significantly lower ratios were observed with CaCO₃. (author)