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Deep geologic repository progress—2025 Update
Editor's note: This article has was originally published in November 2023. It has been updated with new information as of June 2025.
Outside my office, there is a display case filled with rock samples from all over the world. It contains a disk of translucent, orange salt from the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.; a core of white-and-bronze gneiss from the site of the future deep geologic repository in Eurajoki, Finland; several angular chunks of fine-grained, gray claystone from the underground research laboratory at Bure, France; and a piece of coarse-grained granite from the underground research tunnel in Daejeon, South Korea.
G. R. Longhurst
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 14 | Number 2 | September 1988 | Pages 750-755
Tritium Properties and Interactions with Material | Proceedings of the Third Topical Meeting on Tritium Technology in Fission, Fusion and Isotopic Applications (Toronto, Ontario, Canada, May 1-6, 1988) | doi.org/10.13182/FST88-A25225
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Experiments were conducted on samples of depleted uranium and on intermetallic compounds of zirconium-cobalt and lanthanum-nickel-aluminide to evaluate the pyrophoricity of the activated materials and their hydrides and deuterides on exposure to air. None of the materials spontaneously ignited when exposed to room temperature air, but the uranium and the zirconium-cobalt both ignited in air at moderately elevated temperatures. Activated (dehydrided) materials ignited at essentially the same temperatures. Deuterides showed effectively the same characteristics as the hydrides except the ignition temperature of zirconium-cobalt deuteride was reduced by 20–50 K from that of the hydride. The pyrophoricity of these materials raises concern about the possibility of fires in tritium-storage beds with attendant damage to the bed and dispersal of tritiated debris, but fires may not occur until the bed is heated.