Geochemical Behavior and Evaluation for Radioactive Waste Disposal

A special issue of Minerals (ISSN 2075-163X). This special issue belongs to the section "Mineral Geochemistry and Geochronology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (24 February 2023) | Viewed by 2113

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Life and Environmental Physics (DFVM), Horia Hulubei National Institute for Physics and Nuclear Engineering, 30 Reactorului Street, 077125 Magurele, Romania
Interests: gamma spectrometry; gross alpha-beta; radon

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Horia Hulubei National Institute for Physics and Nuclear Engineering, 30 Reactorului Street, 077125 Magurele, Romania
Interests: radioactive waste; radionuclides; environmental radioactivity

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleague,

This Special Issue will focus on all areas relating to the investigation of the chemical composition of minerals, radiometric age dating of minerals, and characterization of geologic, environmental, and anthropogenic samples.

It will provide new insights into the conditions of mineral formation/paragenesis at various temperature and pressure regimes, including interactions of minerals with the geosphere (lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere). Studies may use either novel or standard analytical, imaging, diffraction, microscopic, spectroscopic, synchrotron, and computer modeling techniques. 

For example, the basis of radiometric geochronology is that a radioactive parent element, such as uranium, is incorporated as trace amounts into a mineral when it forms in the Earth’s crust. Over time, that parent element will decay to a stable daughter element, such as lead, which ideally will be locked inside the mineral. By measuring the amount of the parent and daughter elements in a sample and applying the known rate of decay for that radioactive parent, the age at which the mineral formed can be calculated.

Dr. Ileana Radulescu
Dr. Carmen Alexandra Tuca
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Minerals is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  •  radionuclide chemistry
  •  natural and artificial radionuclides
  •  ICP-MS
  •  radiocarbon dating
  •  major, minor and trace elements 
  •  geochronology

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

16 pages, 2209 KiB  
Article
Co-Extraction of Uranium and Mercury Using Ion Exchange from Cemented Radioactive Waste Sulfuric Leachate in Iodide Media
by Maxime Courchesne, Raoul-Marie Couture, Justine Basque, Nicolas Reynier and Dominic Larivière
Minerals 2023, 13(3), 405; https://doi.org/10.3390/min13030405 - 14 Mar 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1682
Abstract
The production of medical isotopes in Chalk River Laboratories facilities (Chalk River, ON, Canada) has resulted in a large quantity of cemented radioactive waste (CRW) containing valuable elements such as uranium. From the perspective of recovering and ultimately recycling valuable elements from CRW, [...] Read more.
The production of medical isotopes in Chalk River Laboratories facilities (Chalk River, ON, Canada) has resulted in a large quantity of cemented radioactive waste (CRW) containing valuable elements such as uranium. From the perspective of recovering and ultimately recycling valuable elements from CRW, the solubilization of key constituents such as uranium, mercury, and cesium has been previously investigated using H2SO4/KI. However, to achieve recycling of these elements, separation must be performed as they are co-solubilized. In this study, the extraction of uranium and mercury by chelating resin Lewatit TP260 from surrogate cemented radioactive waste (SCRW) leaching solution in sulfuric media and in the presence of iodide was investigated. Extraction of U and Hg was assessed as a function of the concentration of KI (0.12 M to 0.24 M) used during the SCRW dissolution process. Continuous experiments showed that the Lewatit TP260 functional group, aminomethylphosphonic acid, had a high affinity for U. Mercury was also extracted onto the Lewatit TP260. However, the presence of iodide in the SCRW leaching solution increased the competition between the adsorbed mercury of the stationary phase and the iodide–mercury complexes of the mobile phase. Additionally, the reusability of the resin was tested through extraction and desorption cycles. Due to the presence of trivalent cation, the capacity of Lewatit TP260 for U and Hg decreases with the number of cycles. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Geochemical Behavior and Evaluation for Radioactive Waste Disposal)
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