The Department of Energy said Monday it would issue over $3 million in grants to U.S. universities for research on management of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste.
The funding is a slice of a $64 million tranche of awards for various advanced nuclear energy technology research programs at DOE national laboratories and 39 universities.
The University of Idaho has been awarded $800,000 for an initiative that employs “stir based repair and mitigation technique” to prevent pitting and stress-corrosion cracking that can cause dry-storage containers for spent fuel to deteriorate, according to a DOE fact sheet. The ultimate goal is to establish a means based on “friction stir technology” to prevent such container failures.
The University of California, Los Angeles, will receive $800,000 for research related to vitrification – converting nuclear waste into a glass form for disposal. Specifically, the project aims to “identify the thermodynamic propensity and corrosion kinetics for zeolite precipitation in borosilicate glasses used in nuclear waste immobilization applications, as a function of solution conditions, such as composition, pH, and temperature,” DOE said. “This information will establish a science-based foundation to facilitate long-term corrosion rate expectations, while ensuring safe and successful vitrification operations.”
The University of Colorado Boulder, will take home $799,798 for research on “geomechanical aspects of modeling by addressing the time-dependent evolution of rock microstructure and its coupling with the THC processes that are of first-order importance to the stability and the isolation performance of repositories,” according to the fact sheet.
Texas A&M University gets $608,375 for a project on how gas migration can impact engineered barriers intended to prevent leakage of high-level radioactive waste in storage or disposal. The findings are expected to contribute to increased knowledge on gas migration and therefore to contribute to stronger designs for engineered barriers.
