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Undeclared uranium hitches a ride on cobalt exports from Congo, study says
Philippe (left) and Manzuk quantified the amount of uranium that has been exported from the DRC in cobalt shipments or left behind in the environment. (Photo: Joel Hallberg/UW–Madison)
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Princeton University have published a study in Nature Communications that calls attention to a blind spot in nuclear nonproliferation: The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has exported thousands of metric tons of uranium, and there is no accounting for where it has gone.
In partnership with Lighthouse Reports and the Financial Times, UW–Madison nuclear engineering professor and nuclear security expert Sébastien Philippe and Ryan Manzuk, a geologist and research fellow in Philippe’s group and at Princeton, conducted the study using countrywide mineralization and geochemical data.
Aku Itälä, Mika Laitinen, Merja Tanhua-Tyrkkö, Markus Olin
Nuclear Technology | Volume 187 | Number 2 | August 2014 | Pages 169-174
Technical Paper | Radioactive Waste Management and Disposal | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-79
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The bentonite barrier is an essential part of a safe spent fuel repository in granitic bedrock. One of the most important safety functions of bentonite buffer is to limit groundwater flow so that all mass transport takes place by diffusion. In this work a new mathematical model was developed to define the transport of ions inside the bentonite, where there are bound interlayer water and free extra layer water and sorption capability. This model is tested in a specified geometry and calculated by two numerical platforms—Numerrin and COMSOL Multiphysics—and compared to the original TOUGHREACT model. The model comparison was not a straightforward task because of different approaches in the model setup. Therefore, all the equations are written down, and parameterization is done to create model descriptions near each other. The developed model adapts easily, and there are many new ideas to be tested in bridging the gap between performance assessment and real systems.