Journal Article

Physical and optical properties of the International Simple Glass

Cushman, Cody, Smith, Nicholas J., Pantano, Carlo G., Hand, Russell J., Hyatt, Neil C., Crawford, Charles L., Lu, Xiaonan, Kaspar, Tiffany C., Kirkham, Michael A., Jantzen, Carol M., Du, Jincheng, Linford, Matthew R., Corkhill, Claire L., Rice, Jarrett, Harrison, Michael T., Trivelpiece, Cory, Mann, Colleen, Ryan, Joseph V.

2019

Overview

Radioactive waste immobilization is a means to limit the release of radionuclides from various waste streams into the environment over a timescale of hundreds to many thousands of years. Vitrification via incorporation of radionuclide-containing wastes into borosilicate glass is one potential route to accomplish such immobilization. Predicting the rate of radionuclide release from borosilicate glass over long periods of environmental exposure is a difficult endeavor, however, due to a lack of scientific consensus on the particular mechanism(s) that control glass corrosion at any given time. To facilitate experimental correlation and reproducibility across experiments and laboratories, a six-component borosilicate glass (Si, B, Na, Al, Ca, Zr) known as the International Simple Glass (ISG) was developed by international consensus as a compromise between simplicity and similarity to waste glasses. Focusing on a single glass composition allows a multi-pronged approach utilizing state-of-the-art, multi-scale experimental and theoretical tools available to the collaborators to realize fundamental insights into the corrosion behavior of the glass. To further this objective, here we review physical property data (both published and previously unpublished) on a single batch of ISG, which was subsequently divided between the collaborators. Properties from the atomic scale to the macroscale, including composition and impurities, phase purity, density, thermal properties, mechanical properties, optical and vibrational properties, and the results of molecular dynamics simulations are presented. In addition, information on the surface composition and morphology after polishing is included. Although the existing literature on the alteration of ISG is not reviewed here, the results of well-controlled static alteration experiments (ASTM C1285) are presented as a point of reference for other performance investigations.

• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
• Subject: MATERIALS SCIENCE