Effect of Curing Environment on the Performance Properties of Saltstone - 13335
At the Savannah River Site (SRS), the low level radioactive waste (LLW) salt solution is immobilized as a cementitious waste form known as Saltstone. Depending on the Saltstone formulation, disposal unit size, environmental conditions and pour schedule, the waste form temperature, due to exothermic hydration reactions, can gradually increase by 30 deg. C to 50 deg. C above the starting temperature. Previous studies at Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) have shown that curing temperature has a negative impact on the hydraulic conductivity and other performance properties of Saltstone; specifically, these studies have shown that curing at elevated temperatures results in faster hydraulic conductivities than what is modeled in the Saltstone Performance Assessment (PA). SRNL is currently testing the performance of laboratory prepared Saltstone cured under controlled conditions (i.e. controlling relative humidity). The PA assumes that the Saltstone remains saturated; therefore, some samples are being kept completely saturated while others have a surface exposed to a high humidity environment. The formulation of these samples has been varied to continue studying the impact of processing parameters on the performance properties of Saltstone. The final water to premix (w/p) ratio of the Saltstone formulation does affect the density, porosity, and compressive strength of the cured Saltstone. The Saltstone formulations with 0.59 w/p ratios and lower had higher densities, lower porosities, and higher compressive strength than samples formulated at a higher w/p ratio. There is a general trend that the samples formulated at high w/p ratios (0.67 and higher) have the lowest density, highest porosity and lowest strength. However, for hydraulic conductivity, the curing environment had a greater effect on the results than the formulation. Therefore, the impact of elevated temperature is not as detrimental to the performance of the waste form as originally concluded, provided the curing environment is controlled and the waste form is not dried out. (authors)