Nuclear Engineering and Technology

Korean Nuclear Society (한국원자력학회)
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Effect of supplementary cementitious materials on the degradation of cement-based barriers in radioactive waste repository: A case study in Korea

  • Min-Seok Kim (Department of Nuclear and Quantum Engineering, KAIST) ;
  • Sol-Chan Han (Physical and Life Sciences Directorate, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) ;
  • Jong-Il Yun (Department of Nuclear and Quantum Engineering, KAIST)
  • Received : 2023.10.06
  • Accepted : 2024.04.26
  • Published : 2024.09.25
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Abstract

This study focuses on investigating the chemical degradation characteristics of cementitious barriers used in low-and intermediate-level radioactive waste repository by reactive transport modeling. The impact of the blending with supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) in the barriers on the chemical degradation was evaluated to find the optimum barrier design. A number of different barrier designs were examined by replacing ordinary Portland cement (OPC) by SCMs (i.e., fly ash, silica fume, and blast-furnace slag). The simulation results showed that silica fume blended barrier has better durability against chemical degradation by rainwater compared to fly ash or blast-furnace slag blended barriers. In addition, the chemical durability of silica fume-based barrier increased with increasing replacement level up to about 20 %. It seems that the amount of formed calcium silicate hydrate (CSH) in the initial cement-based barrier highly affects the overall chemical durability. The newly developed reactive transport model demonstrated its capability for understanding the barrier performance and investigating the optimal design of the barrier system.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the Institute for Korea Spent Nuclear Fuel (iKSNF) and Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning (KETEP) grant funded by the Korea government (Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE)) (No. 2021040101003C).

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