Corrosion of synthesized glasses and glazes as analogs for nuclear waste glass degradation

Studies of corrosion of synthetic glasses indicate that the measurement of bulk concentration of the uranium in the corrosion products is not indicative of the danger posed by the concentrated uranium-containing particles. The implication for this for a nuclear waste glass consisting of cesium encased in zeolite particles, a zinc oxide-borosilicate base glass with a considerable addition of iron oxide-containing sludge, is that the particles may corrode as a separate phase from the matrix or base glass, and thus must be considered as a segregable material whose corrosion should be assessed independently from the glass matrix. Assessment of the corrosion behavior of historical and archaelogical glasses and glazes provides an analog to the corrosion of nuclear waste-containment glasses which is intermediate in time between natural glasses produced by geological processes for which parameters are difficult to document and laboratory test glasses which require assumptions about the validity of accelerated aging parameters.