Fixation of radionuclides in soil and minerals by heating

Heating of fine sand-sized common mineral powders (quartz, feldspar, or calcite) or a soil (from the Department of Energy's Hanford site) up to 1000 degrees C, in contact with sorbed radioisotopes (85Sr, 57Co, 134Cs, or U), markedly increased each isotope's immobilization. A sequential extraction procedure was applied after heating the materials to assess the changes in each isotope's functional form among water-soluble, cation-exchangeable, acid-soluble, and residual phases. The overall immobilization effects were consistent with rapid high temperature ionic diffusion from the initially contaminated surfaces into the mineral matrices; subsequent diffusion out of mineral particles at ambient temperature, as measured by the sequential extraction behavior, would be such a slow process that the radionuclides may be considered sequestered from further potential environmental mobilization. In the Hanford soil, the effect was found to follow an Arrhenius-type relationship with treatment temperature up to 1000 degrees C for 57Co, 85Sr, and U, and immobilization was independent of previous thermal treatment of the materials. Although 134Cs exhibited its largest immobilization in the Hanford soil after heating to 1000 degrees C, the large immobilization of 134Cs at all temperature and even in unheated Hanford soil made it difficult to observe a strong temperature dependence. A general and promising technique for environmental remediation of contaminated soil by high-temperature heating without melting can be extrapolated directly from the empirical leaching information.