What about nuclear waste? Tungsten alloy is the best shielding material?
Tungsten alloy shield irrigation is known to be more suitable for storing nuclear waste than other shielding materials such as lead and concrete. This is not only because the alloy has the advantages of environmental protection, non-toxic and non-radioactive, but also because of its high proportion, hardness, rigidity, corrosion resistance, oxidation resistance, wear resistance and high temperature resistance.
In recent years, with the development of society, the consumption of coal and fossil fuels has been increasing. As they are non-renewable resources and the total storage is limited, they will be exhausted one day. In order to alleviate the current shortage of energy supply and ensure the normal life of human beings in the future, nuclear power generation has been widely used, which can be a good substitute for coal power generation. So tungsten alloy shield irrigation is more and more widely used in the storage of nuclear waste.
Currently, about 10 percent of the world's electricity comes from nuclear power plants, much of which comes from nuclear fission. Nuclear fission, the splitting of a massive atomic nucleus into two or more smaller ones, generates a lot of heat that can boil water to produce steam, which in turn turns turbine blades to produce electricity.
However, this does not mean that nuclear power generation will not have adverse effects on our lives. We need to know that any activity that uses radioactive materials produces radioactive waste, including from nuclear power stations. Nuclear power plants mostly use uranium compounds such as uranium oxide and uranium carbide as nuclear fuel. Tungsten alloy shield irrigation plays an important role in waste storage
According to the level of radioactivity, nuclear waste can be divided into low -, medium - and high - radioactive waste. Low-level radioactive waste is the largest type of radioactive waste, including waste nuclear power equipment and instruments, waste generated in the production process of nuclear fuel and the work clothes of nuclear power plants, etc. They are suitable for the disposal of shallow strata, caves or deep strata. Tungsten alloy shield irrigation is used before placing in these layers.
Intermediate radioactive waste refers to the radioactive waste whose content of radionuclides is lower than that of high-level radioactive waste, but which still needs to be shielded during normal operation and transportation, such as waste liquid and waste residue. Generally, the factory deals with it through multiple processes to make it meet the specified discharge standards before it is discharged.
High-level radioactive waste (spent fuel) refers to radioactive waste with a high content or concentration of radionuclides that requires special shielding during operation and transportation, such as 137-cesium, 90 strontium, plutonium, uranium, etc. High levels are not only more radioactive but also hotter than low and medium levels, making them very difficult to deal with.
Spent fuel taken out of the reactor is kept in water for five to eight years, which lowers the temperature and reduces the radiation capacity, and then either recycled or transferred to shielded irrigation. However, recycling is difficult and expensive, so most countries use direct disposal, which means that spent fuel is stored in shielded barrels and transported to temporary storage plants for 50 years before being solidified and encapsulated for geological burial.
It is worth mentioning that shielding irrigation for high-level nuclear waste is suitable for tungsten alloy production. Tungsten alloy is a kind of transition metal tungsten as the base, such as cobalt, nickel, iron, copper metal elements as additive in alloy material, with high density, and under the same thickness shielding effect is far superior to lead alloy material, and has the good properties, such as thermodynamics and chemical, and not like a metallic lead toxicity, so as to meet the requirements of the future development of more.
