Fig. 3: Vapor hydration experiments of SON68 glass, the inactive surrogate of the French R7T7 nuclear waste containment glass. | npj Materials Degradation

Fig. 3: Vapor hydration experiments of SON68 glass, the inactive surrogate of the French R7T7 nuclear waste containment glass.

From: Glass alteration in atmospheric conditions: crossing perspectives from cultural heritage, glass industry, and nuclear waste management

Fig. 3

a Alteration layer thickness measured by FTIR in transmission mode with SEM calibration, as a function of the square root of time, for various conditions from 35 °C, 95% RH (slowest kinetics) to 125 °C, 95% RH (highest kinetics). b Arrhenius plot of the H2O apparent diffusion coefficient deduced from the alteration layer thickness Alt by the equation \(Alt = 2\sqrt {\frac{{D_{H2O} \times t}}{\pi }}\). c Alteration products observed on glass powder altered at 125 °C and 95% RH for 593 days and their identification by Raman spectroscopy. In addition to calcite, apatite, tobermorite and powellite identified by Raman, phyllosilicates are also present on the surface of the grains. d Left: SEM image (secondary electrons) of the edge of the glass monolith altered at 125 °C and 95% RH for 593 days in an autoclave with D218O saline solution, and right: 18O/16O TOF-SIMS profile of the same sample. The D2O apparent diffusion coefficient deduced by fitting the TOF-SIMS profile was 2.3 × 10−19 m2 s−1, in good agreement with the H2O diffusion coefficient evaluated in (b) of 5.3 × 10−19 m2 s−1. Scale bars are c 10 µm, d 1 µm. Reprinted from ref. 84, Copyright (2018), with permission from ELSEVIER.

Back to article page