WastePD

The Center for Performance and Design of Nuclear Waste Forms and Containers, which is shortened to“WastePD”, was established as an Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) in 2016. The Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) for the EFRCs referred to the report from a DOE workshop on Basic Research Needs for Environmental Management (BRN-EM). One of the panels of that workshop addressed waste forms and one of the topical areas in the FOA was “new materials for long-term storage of nuclear waste, including waste forms.” The main performance criterion for waste forms, and the primary consideration for the design of new ones, is their ability to isolate the radionuclides by withstanding degradation in a repository environment over long periods of time.  WastePD is focused on this topic, specifically the environmental degradation mechanisms and the science underlying the design of new degradation-resistant waste forms.