FY2010 - Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Director’s R&D Fund—
Advanced Energy Systems
Results and Accomplishments
During the second year of this project, we continued to make outstanding progress on the two major
thrusts. The first is the development of the cermet waste form, which is composed of a ceramic phase and
a metal phase. In the first year of the project, we demonstrated that a cermet material could be formed
from only the simulated liquid HLW and simulated undissolved solids. A critical demonstration during
the second year has been the successful use of only the intrinsic components of the waste from the
aqueous separations of the used nuclear fuel (UNF), as well as the waste from the hardware components
and proposed recovery and recycling of the zircaloy fuel cladding materials, to form a high-metal-content
cermet. Significantly, this cermet is ~100% waste (i.e., with the exception of oxygen)—no nonwaste
constituents have been added. The second major effort was directed toward modeling the resulting cermet
materials. We have developed and refined methods and tools needed to guide the preparation and tailoring
of the cermet waste forms and to model the resulting materials so that we can project their performance in
terms of thermodynamics and heat transfer. To date, we have accomplished the following:
Assembled and begun testing experimental equipment for denitration of simulant waste solutions to
produce oxide powders, conversion of reducible components to metals, and hot pressing of the
mixtures to cermet forms
Produced the first cermet pellet from the simulated liquid waste from aqueous UNF reprocessing
without the use of additives to tailor the ceramic or metal phases
Identified problematic constituents arising from the recycling of the zircaloy fuel cladding materials
and developed and tested alternate cermet formulations and production pathways
Produced a cermet pellet from the simulated liquid waste from aqueous UNF reprocessing plus the
residual simulated waste resulting from the proposed recycle of the UNF zircaloy cladding materials
and fuel assembly hardware—again, without the use of additives to tailor the ceramic or metal phases
Characterized the resulting cermets by different methods including scanning electron microscopy,
laser flash thermal analysis, and X-ray diffraction
Created a thermal transport model to predict the heat transfer and temperature profiles within the
heterogeneous cermet waste form
Identified anisotropy in the samples analyzed (cermet material appears to be orthotropic with higher
radial conductivity)
Information Shared
Aaron, W. S., R. T. Jubin, G. D. Del Cul, R. J. Vedder, and E. D. Collins. 2010. CERMET High Level
Waste Forms. UT-Battelle Invention Disclosure 201002403, Apr. 19. Patent application in
preparation.
Jubin, R. T., W. S. Aaron, E. D. Collins, V. F. De Almeida, G. D. DelCul, D. W. DePaoli, L. K. Felker,
B. D. Patton, D. B. Kothe, and S. L. Voit. 2009. “Development of Cermet High-Level Waste Forms.”
Proceedings of the Integrated Radioactive Waste Management in Future Fuel Cycles Conference,
Charleston, SC, Nov. 8–12.
Jubin, R. T., W. S. Aaron, E. D. Collins, V. F. De Almeida, G. D. DelCul, D. W. DePaoli, L. K. Felker,
B. D. Patton, and S. L. Voit. 2010. “Cermet High-Level Waste Forms.” American Ceramic Society,
Materials Challenges in Alternative & Renewable Energy 2010, Coco Beach, FL, Feb. 21–24.
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