12 May 2020                                                   Credit: BNC / M. Fábián

The spent nuclear fuels constitute high-level radioactive wastes containing U, Pu and some minor amount of actinides, Am and Cm. U and Pu can be converted into MOX fuel, but other long-lived actinides need long-term storage in an inert host material. Borosilicate glasses are the prime candidates due to their mechanical and chemical durability for immobilization high-level radioactive waste.

The study focuses on structural investigation of borosilicate glasses to incorporate lanthanides ions as a non-radioactive surrogate for the actinides. Neutron diffraction, NMR and Raman spectroscopy, complemented with computational simulations were applied to determine the structure of lanthanide borosilicate glasses. This detailed structural study allowed to conclude that borosilicate glass matrices have a great potential for high-level radioactive waste management.