Monitoring uranium corrosion in 15-year-old simulant nuclear waste packages

Within the British nuclear inventory, fuel cladding waste used to be encapsulated in grout and stored in stainless steel drums. Due to mechanical faults occurring during metal fuel-cladding separation, it is expected that uranium swarf is also present in these drums. Recent inspections have revealed considerable distortion in a proportion of these drums, ascribed to uranium and cladding material corrosion taking place over the storage period. Potential mechanical failure of the drums raises concerns about how efficient the grout encapsulation is. We are now custodians of a number of mini trials, simulants of nuclear waste drums and initially produced by National Nuclear Laboratory approximately 15 years ago. We aim to perform neutron tomography and diffraction to investigate the state of interior metallic corrosion and grout degradation, and associate it with the real case scenario.