Treatment of radioactive waste using some phosphate compounds

Abstract

Radioactive waste is one of the most serious challenges that was and still facing many countries particularly those having Nuclear Power Plants. Such waste will most likely remain into the far future, a problematic legacy of the existence of humans especially since the nuclear accidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima.

Radioactive waste is any material that is either radioactive itself or is contaminated by radioactivity, for which no further use is envisaged. Such waste could be resulted from different activities like research, mining and oil exploration, industrial, and medical application of radioisotopes. Radioactive wastes could be categorized in many ways based on their characteristics, e.g. activities, concentrations, toxicities, physical and chemical forms, as well as the half-lives of the radionuclides. The radioactive liquid waste has drawn attention of scientists over the past years; since inappropriate control of such waste may result in transportation of hazardous radionuclides in water and bottom sediments then it becomes a source of threat to the living beings. The current work has focused on the treatment of radioactive liquid waste using sorbent materials prepared from low cost sources (Eggshell and Fishbone) as an alternative material to the high cost commercial ion exchanges.

The thesis consists of three basic chapters. Chapter (1) is the introduction; chapter (2) is the experimental part that includes the methodology and the practical steps of this work.