A novel and inexpensive wet chemical route for precursor synthesis of synroc monoliths

Synroc waste forms containing a simulated nuclear waste of fast reactor origin were synthesized employing a simple and inexpensive wet chemical method by completely avoiding the use of organic reagents. Peroxytitanic acid prepared by dissolving titanium metal powder in an alkaline hydrogen peroxide solution was used as source for titania; the other constituents were taken as metal nitrates. A nano precursor with high surface area was obtained by co-precipitation, and it gave a dense synroc monolith on sintering. The precursor and final product were characterized by TG–DTA coupled with EG-MS, XRD, SEM and BET.