Symposium ET15-Scientific Basis for Nuclear Waste Management

The safe management and disposal of radioactive wastes, from civil and defence nuclear operations, and decommissioning of nuclear facilities, continues to be a challenge of global significance. This MRS symposium, first held in 1978, has emerged as the premier international meeting to address the fundamental and applied science of materials in the context of nuclear waste management.

This 42^nd symposium will focus on the treatment and disposal of low-, intermediate-, and high-level nuclear wastes from commercial power generation, fuel reprocessing, and production of materials for defence. Technologies for interim, short-term, and long-term storage and disposal are of interest, including mature processes as well as new and innovative technologies. Waste form development, including glass, ceramic, metallic, and composite waste forms, will be included, along with methods of processing challenging waste constituents, such as actinides and noble metals. Waste form modelling, performance testing, and advanced characterization techniques will be discussed. Advances in Engineered barrier system (EBS) properties, interactions between engineered and geological systems, radiation effects, chemistry and transport of radionuclides, and long-term predictions of repository performance, will also be discussed.

Topics will include:

Waste form materials for legacy and future radioactive waste management: formulation design, radiation damage effects, dissolution and alteration mechanisms
Development and scale up of processing technologies for production and sequestration, including: melt processing, hot isostatic pressing, cementation, steam reforming, and other routes
Behavior of spent nuclear fuel materials, and in container processes, during wet and dry storage and expected disposal environments
Geological disposal of radioactive wastes, including: container corrosion; engineered barrier materials; radionuclide solubility, speciation, sorption and migration; and natural analogue materials
Materials for sequestration and immobilisation of volatile and long lived radionuclides, including: iodine-129, technetium-99 and carbon-14
Strategies, processes and materials for the disposition of plutonium and fissile materials from civil and defence stockpiles
Characterization, properties, management and disposal of damaged nuclear fuel and corium materials from conceptual and actual nuclear accidents, including Chernobyl Unit 4 and Fukushima Dai-ici

Invited Speakers:

David Shoesmith (Western University, Canada)
Francis Claret (Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et Minières, France)
Claire Corkhill (The University of Sheffield, United Kingdom)
Nicolas Dacheux (Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives, France)
Lara Duro (Amphos 21, Spain)
Kevin Fox (Savannah River National Laboratory, USA)
Gerald Frankel (Ohio State University, USA)
Konstantin German (A. N. Frumkin Institute of Physics, Russian Federation)
Isabelle Giboire (Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives, France)
Ashutosh Goel (Rutgers University, USA)
Daniel Gregg (Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, Australia)
Jong Heo (Pohang University of Science and Technology, Republic of Korea)
Erika Holt (VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Finland)
Joe Hriljac (University of Birmingham, United Kingdom)
Urs Maeder (University of Bern, Switzerland)
David McKeown (Catholic University of America, USA)
Stefan Neumeier (Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany)
Daniel Neuville (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifque, Sorbonne, France)
Carolyn Pearce (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, USA)
Olivia Roth (Studsvik, Sweden)
Sarah Saslow (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, USA)
Bill Weber (University of Tennessee, USA)