About 16% of world's electricity is from nuclear energy, and that represents a large percentage of the energy in industrial countries. In order to have safe nuclear stewardship, issues like the safety of nuclear power plants, the disposal of nuclear waste, and the diversion of nuclear material from the production of nuclear weapons should be urgently addressed. Our research focus is on the design of ion-exchangers for remediation of actinide waste, development of advance waste forms that sequester actinides and development of structure-property correlations for proper understanding of their structural chemistry. The solid-state chemistry of actinide diphosphonate complexes and its carboxylate derivative-carboxyphosphonate are intriguing. Structural elucidations of the actinide phosphonates are crucial for understanding their behavior and impact on the environment in assessing their long term effect to radioactive dose at nuclear waste repositories like Yucca Mountain. This presentation will highlight results from our recent studies involving the use of aryl diphosphonates and carboxyphosphonates.

Structural chemistry of actinide arylphosphonates: Precursors to advanced waste forms and remediation

241st National Meeting (2011)

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