Low-level radioactive waste management using microwave technology

Abstract

Low-level radioactive waste is the inevitable outcome of many industrial, medical applications and nuclear power plants. This type of low-level waste is, however, also very hazardous, and its proper disposal is necessary as it may leak and contaminate soil and water, leading to both the environment and human health issues. The disposition and storage of the radioactive waste in its original form is very much critical and expensive, hence the pre-processing, including the proper procedure for the storage allocation is necessary for effective handling of this waste disposal. Most common approaches of preprocessing are “replace,” “reduce,” “reuse,” and “recycle.” The “reduce” approach is explored in this study using the novel microwave technology to handle the low-level radioactive waste. This approach has never been used before for this purpose. The applicability of the proposed method is validated using medical waste such as tissue papers, plastic carry bags, etc., and industrial waste such as Teflon tubing, concrete, glass, wood, etc., as test objects. These test objects (waste materials) are first categorized here based on their dielectric loss in order to explore the possibility of heating them using either the microwave or the conventional heating process. The heating process can effectively reduce total waste volume in a short span of time. The categorization of these materials is carried out by placing them into the prototype concealed environment to avoid any radioactive leakage. Finally, microwave technology is actually applied for the first time to monitor the online reduction in the volume of waste during the treatment processes.