Application of concrete to the treatment and disposal of radioactive waste in Japan

Abstract

Low level radioactive waste will be disposed at the Rokkasho site in Aomori Prefecture in Japan. During the treatment, storage and disposal of the radioactive waste, concrete is used and will be used for various purposes. For this reason a lot of research & development has been carried out on concrete at various institutes, universities and manufactures in Japan. This paper presents the present state of application of concrete to treatment, storage and disposal of low level radioactive waste in Japan. In the 2nd section, the electric power supply and the kinds and volumes of radioactive waste from nuclear power plants in Japan are described. In the 3rd section, the applications of concrete to the treatment of radioactive waste are described. These are solidification with cement and containers made by various mortars and concretes. The application of concrete to disposal structures are presented in the 4th section; these are research on the durabity of concrete under disposal site condition, research on the filling the concrete pit with 200 1 drum packed cement solidified wastes by prepacked concreting methods, and so on. And this section describes also the outlines of the low level radioactive disposal system at the Rokkasho site.