The ceramic waste form (CWF) was developed to immobilize radioactive salt wastes recovered after electrometallurgical treatment of spent sodium-bonded nuclear fuels, such as those from the ANL Experimental Breeder Reactor-II (EBR-II) and the Fermi reactor. A homogeneous glass waste form similar to that used at other DOE sites is not amenable to these salt wastes because of the low solubility of chloride in borosilicate glasses. Therefore, the salt is first occluded in zeolite, then the salt-loaded zeolite (SLZ) is encapsulated in a borosilicate glass. During the encapsulation step, the salt-loaded zeolite transforms to the mineral sodalite and submicrometer-sized inclusions of halite (crystalline NaCl) and rare earth and actinide oxides become fixed in the binder glass. A hot isostatic press (HIP) method was used for encapsulating the SLZ during the development of the CWF. In FY 2000, the decision was made to use a pressureless consolidation (PC) method instead of the HIP method. The work described in this report was conducted to compare the quality of the CWF materials made using the HIP and PC methods and to evaluate the effects of waste loadings and various processing conditions.
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