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14 DECEMBER 2016 MATERIALS PERFORMANCE NACE INTERNATIONAL: VOL. 55, NO. 12 T he U.S. Department of Energ y (DOE) (Washington, DC) is con- tributing $10 million over the next four years through its Energ y Frontier Research Center (EFRC) program to fund the development of the Center for Performance and Design of Nuclear Waste Forms and Containers (WastePD), based at The Ohio State Uni- versity (Columbus, Ohio). The EFRC program seeks to "acceler- ate the scientif ic breakthroughs needed to support the DOE's environmental man- agement and nuclear cleanup mission" through " basic research aimed at assist- ing with the cleanup of hazardous waste that resulted from decades of nuclear weapons research and production during the 20th century," DOE says in its announcement. Meanwhile, the specif ic mission of WastePD is to understand the fundamental mechanisms of waste form performance, and apply that understand- ing to design new waste forms with improved performance. Gerald Frankel, FNACE, professor of materials science and engineering at Ohio State, will serve as director of WastePD, which aims to bring together expertise from numerous partner institu- tions across the United States, including John Scully, FNACE, from the University of Virginia, and a laboratory in France. Experts see glass, ceramics, and metals as viable long-term storage options for nuclear waste, but note that further research is needed on the potential corro- sion of these host materials. "I believe that this center will be the first ever to look at the corrosion of met- als, glass, and ceramics in a coordinated fashion," says Frankel, who was appointed by U.S. President Barack Obama in 2012 to the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. Frankel recently resigned that post to focus on the new center. "DOE is responsible for cleaning up the environmental legacy associated with making nuclear weapons, which will take many more decades," Frankel adds. "WastePD will develop the underlying sci- ence that will enable the development of solutions to problems that DOE will have in the next 10 to 20 years." DOE's four-year funding for WastePD could be renewed for four additional years through a competitive process at a later date, Frankel says. Most of the existing U.S. nuclear waste from nuclear weapons is currently stored in underground tanks in Hanford, Wash- ington, and Savannah River, South Caro- lina, Frankel says—adding that the waste can take the form of liquid, sludge, or pre- cipitated solids. Most will be mixed with borosilicate glass and cast into stainless steel containers. However, this containment strateg y presents its own challenges. For instance, some radionuclides cannot be processed through a glass melter and must be stabi- lized in ceramic or metal hosts. Addition- ally, f inal waste forms must be stable for ~100,000 years. To address these challenges, Frankel and his team will study materials at the atomic level, with the idea of making dis- coveries that will lead to future cleanup and storage technologies. Specif ically, the Ohio State research- ers and their partners say they will aim to understand how such waste might be converted into stable solids that are unlikely to degrade—and, thus, unlikely to leak radiation—for hundreds of thou- sands of years. Ultimately, the waste may be incorporated into new glass or ceramic materials, or even new kinds of metals. The research will not involve any use of radioactive waste on campus. Rather, the researchers will work to design new materials that will contain nuclear waste. "The primary performance criterion for nuclear waste forms is their resistance to degradation in the storage and reposi- tory environments over long periods," Frankel says. "Ohio State is an ideal place for this research, since our Fontana Cor- rosion Center is a world leader in the envi- ronmental degradation of materials." Within glass corrosion, topics to be explored at the center will include the Corrosion Research on Metals, Glass, and Ceramics in Nuclear Waste Gets Funding Boost Most of the existing U.S. nuclear waste from nuclear weapons is currently stored in underground tanks. Photo courtesy of Gerald Frankel, The Ohio State University. Containment devices for nuclear waste can show signs of corrosion. Photo courtesy of Gerald Frankel, The Ohio State University. MATERIAL MATTERS