Abstract
In recent years, nuclear industry has made a rapid progress due to the rising demand of uninterrupted supply of clean energy. However, its progress also brings the question of nuclear waste management where conventional methods generate a lot of medium- or low-level radioactive waste. These reasons have caused researchers around the globe to look for alternative methods in radioactive waste management, and plasma is one of these promising alternative methods. Researchers also pointed that nonthermal atmospheric pressure plasma can serve as a potential alternative technique for radioactive decontamination. However, there are only a few published works available to guide this technology from lab to nuclear power plants. In an effort to bridge such gap, we will show how one can develop different types of nonthermal plasma devices and employ them successfully for radioactive decontamination purposes through chemical etching. As the issue of scaling up such a plasma device for actual deployment in power plant has always been perceived as challenge, we will show that, with proper design considerations, such challenges can also be taken care of. Our experimental results inside a glove box on radioactive wastes show that plasma etching can be a very effective alternative tool in radioactive waste management.
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Kar, R., Bute, A., Chand, N., Ahmed, Z., Maiti, N., Patil, D.S. (2020). Removal of Radioactive Waste by Nonthermal Plasma Etching: Trends for the Promising Future. In: Hussain, C. (eds) Handbook of Environmental Materials Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58538-3_224-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58538-3_224-1
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