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ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGY: ACTINIDES
The countries which use nuclear energy have to be able to manage the wastes that come from it. One of the areas of expertise of the Area of Environmental Technology is the study of the behaviour of actinides, products of fission and activation produced in nuclear power stations under expected conditions in the safety repositories of radioactive wastes.
Research is mainly focused on the behaviour of spent nuclear fuel in a geological deep repository. The research group is developing theoretical models to predict radionuclide release resulting from the interaction between spent fuel and groundwater. It has also studied the uranium mineral dissolution used as a natural substitute for spent fuel as well as actinide and fission product migration in natural systems.
In the mentioned studies different experimental techniques are used; some of these are: x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), x-ray absorption spectroscopy (EXAFS, XANES), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and of atomic force (AFM), Time-Resolved Laser Fluorescence Spectroscopy (TRLFS) or mass spectrometry (ESI-MS).
The Actinides Research group belongs to the European Network of Excellence ACTINET-6, and collaborates with the most important European Research Institutes in this field: ITU (Joint Research Centre, Karlsruhe), INE (Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe) Institute of Radiochemistry (Forschungszentrum, Rossendorf) and CEA Commissariat à l'Enérgie Atomique (France). Most of its projects are financed by ENRESA (Empresa Nacional de Residuos Radiactivos S.A) and are for the European Union.
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