Call for Papers

Please contact the symposium organizers with questions.

Management of nuclear waste is a global challenge for further development of the nuclear power industry. Over the next few decades, scientists and technologists will need to design and implement an integrated understanding of the multi-scale processes involved in the processing, packaging, disposal and regulation of a wide variety of nuclear waste materials. This MRS symposium, first held in 1978, has emerged as the premier international meeting to address the fundamental and applied science of materials in the context of nuclear waste management.

The 46^th symposium will discuss the key scientific challenges for the safe and effective management of spent nuclear fuel (SNF), and low-, intermediate-, and high-level nuclear wastes. This would include an overview of the international research and waste management programs around the world. Molten salt reactor waste and effluent management strategies, technologies for interim, short-term, and long-term storage and disposal, including mature processes as well as new and innovative technologies will be discussed. Waste forms and engineered barrier system (EBS) properties, interactions between engineered and geological systems, radiation effects, chemistry and transport of radionuclides, long-term predictions of repository performance and nuclear safeguards are just some other topics that will presented at the symposium by internationally renowned speakers and leading researchers in the field.

Topics will include:

• Waste forms: design, formulation, fabrication, durability testing; effect of disposal conditions and radiation on properties of waste forms (SNF, glass, ceramic, cement…)
• Development and scale up of processing technologies: melt processing in joule-heated ceramic melter and cold crucible, hot isostatic pressing, cementation, and steam reforming
• Behavior of spent nuclear fuel materials in different disposal environments
• Geological disposal of radioactive wastes: concepts, designs and materials; container corrosion; engineered barrier systems; radionuclide solubility, speciation, sorption and migration
• Materials for sequestration and immobilization of volatile and long lived radionuclides, e.g., iodine-129 and technetium-99
• Molten salt reactor waste and effluent management strategies
• Strategies, processes and materials for the disposition of plutonium and fissile materials from civil and defense stockpiles
• National waste management programs
• Development and enhancement of safeguards concepts, methods and techniques, including development of analytical methods for nuclear forensics advancement
• Cross-cutting topics: recent developments and novel techniques in solid and liquid characterization, sensing and monitoring of radionuclides, and modeling tools

Invited Speakers (tentative):

• Hunter Andrews (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA)
• Kyle Brinkman (Clemson University, USA)
• Krista Carlson (University of Utah, USA)
• Nicolas Clavier (Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives, France)
• Jarrod Crum (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, USA)
• Lena Evins (Swedish Nuclear Fuel Waste Management Company, Sweden)
• Daniel Gregg (Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, Australia)
• Kazuya Idemitsu (Kyushu University, Japan)
• Rebecca Lunn (University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland)
• Joanna McFarlene (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA)
• Anamul Haq Mir (University of Huddersfield, United Kingdom)
• Nieves Rodrigues (Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas, Spain)
• Amy Welty (Idaho National Laboratory, USA)

Symposium Organizers