Adsorption And Migration Of Americium-241 On Aerated Zone Soil

It is necessary to study the adsorption and migration behavior of the radioactive nuclide after the radioactive waste storeroom was destroyed. This work is not only important for the choice, design and construction of the disposal site, but also it is a key issue for safety assessment on treatment of radioactive waste.As a transuranium element, americium has about 20 radioisotopes or isomers. Among them, ²⁴¹Am (T_1/2= 433 years, E_α= 5.468 MeV, 86.6%; 5.443 MeV, 12.3%; E_γ=0.0596 MeV, 35%) is the most important one in that it has widespread use in industry and scientific research fields. Unfortunately, ²⁴¹Am is one of the most serious contamination concerns due to its long half-life and α-particle emission, especially, the tendency to deposit on several key tissues or organs, such as skeleton and liver, if it enters human body. For these reasons, all countries of the world have paid considerable attention to the removal and treatment of radioactive waste containing ²⁴¹Am. The radioactive waste with low-medium radioactivity of ²⁴¹Am was produced unavoidablely in the research process with ²⁴¹Am in Institute of Nuclear Physics and Chemistry, CAEP (Mianyang, P. R. China). These wastes containing ²⁴¹Am were suggested to perpetually deposit in a shallow underground waste repository with a multiple barrier system. So, it is necessary to study adsorption and migration of ²⁴¹Am in soil because soil is one of the main mediums of shallow underground waste repository. Moreover, since europium has low toxicity and similar chemical characters to americium, Eu is often used as a substitute for Am when the chemical behavior of ²⁴¹Am should be investigated.In this paper, the adsorption of Eu(III) on the aerated zone soil from a planning...