Silver chloride mitigates radioactive contamination of soil
S. Himmelstein | May 03, 2021Radioactive iodine-129 contamination of soil and groundwater near the center of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River site in South Carolina, a legacy of plutonium and tritium production during the Cold War era, is being reduced with a silver chloride-based cleanup process to levels well below regulatory limits.
Field tests completed by technology developer and cleanup contractor Savannah River Nuclear Solutions confirms that injection of silver chloride beneath a portion of the site reduced iodine-129 by up to 50%. The passive cleanup technology generates no additional waste and consumes no external power.
Ultra-fine particles of silver chloride with irregular edges are injected with water into the water table as deep as 60 ft below the surface. A total of 240,000 gallons of water and 165 gallons of silver chloride have been injected to date.
Researchers drill for soil samples as part of a project to immobilize iodine-129 in groundwater and soil at the Savannah River site. Source: Savannah River Nuclear Solutions
I would have liked to see the actual levels of I-131 that they were measuring before and after, as well as the types of chemical and biological pathways that were believed to be active in achieving this. The original post was simply a press release instead of any form of a scientific paper.
--JMM
The title is misleading; implying, to me at least, that the radioactivity would be reduced. However, the photo caption uses the word "immobilizes," which means it keeps the radioactivity from spreading rather than reducing it.