Mineralogical and Corrosion Problem Underlying the Choice of Materials for High-Level Nuclear Waste Disposal

Abstract

Several nations, Canada and the United States among them, propose to dispose of high-level nuclear waste by placing in a mined geological repository, and the most commonly proposed containers for the waste are of various metals. In this paper the basic scientific issues arising from the need to predict the corrosion behavior of metal waste packages over archaeological and geological time frames are discussed from the standpoint of regulatory research. Emphasis is placed on using a combination of short-term tests and archaeological and natural analogues to bound degradation rates and to identify uncertainties in claims made for long-term waste package behavior.