Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 February 2011
Waste blocks were produced in a bituminization plant using NPP-operational and other liquid wastes of low and intermediate level activity and tested under laboratory and near-surface wet disposal conditions. Leach rates of radioactive and non-radioactive waste components and depths of radionuclide penetration into the host loamy soil were estimated. Bituminized waste seems to occupy a middle position between cemented and vitrified waste forms in terms of radionuclide retention ability. For certain samples of the bitumen waste form, the testing covers a period of more then a quarter of a century that is of great importance for prediction of the waste form behavior over the required time period of several hundred years.