CLAY ADSORPTION OF HIGH LEVEL WASTES 
L. P. Hatch, Sanitary Engineer 
Brookhaven National Laboratory 
Objectives of Research Project. 
To facilitate the handling of reactor wastes it is desirable 
to separate the radioactive fission products from the main body of 
the wastes, and to get them in the smallest volume possible. At 
Brookhaven a research project was undertaken to find an economical 
way to adsorb and fix fission products on montmorillonite clay. 
The solution to the problem is not a simple matter of flowing the 
waste streams through a bed of the clay. The reactor waste streams 
are too complex for that. The composition of the waste stream deperds 
upon the type of fuel used in the reactor, which in turn depends upon 
the particular use of the reactor. 
Composition of Reactor Wastes Depends upon Form of Fuel 
Common Form: In the heterogeneous type of reactor the solid 
fuel elements are made up of uranium containing U Pe After fission- 
ing in the reactor, fission products are interspersed uniformly 
throughout the fuel element. To separate uranium and plutonium from 
fission products, the irradiated fuel element is dissolved in nitric 
acid and the solution put through various solvent extraction pro- 
cesses. After separation the fission products are in the acid waste 
stream of the chemical processes. The acidity of the wastes causes 
much trouble in subsequent stages of handling the fission products. 
In the work at Brookhaven National Laboratory the first problem is 
to make a separation of the acid or the other inert salts in order 
that adsorption of the fission products on clay may proceed with 
efficiency. 
Pc 
