Synthetic Clay Separates Radium

摘要

A synthetic clay known as swelling mica may offer an inexpensive, superselective alternative in the costly, complicated field of radioactive and hazardous waste disposal.Professor of clay mineralogy Sridhar Komarneni and a team of researchers from Penn State (Materials Research Institute, 205 Materials Research Laboratory, University Park, PA 16802; Tel:814/865-1452) have demonstrated that sodium-4mica, one of a number of synthetic micas tested, has the capacity to separate radium ions, a natural decay product of uranium, from water.