Analysis of Decontamination from Concrete by Microwave Power

The paper analyzes a scheme of decontamination of radionuclides from concrete structures, in which rapid microwave heating is used to spall off a thin contaminated surface layer. The analysis is split in two parts: (1) The hygrothermal part of the problem, which consists in calculating the evolution of the temperature and pore pressure fields, and (2) the fracturing part, which consists in predicting the stresses, deformations and fracturing. The rate of the distributed source of heat due to microwaves in concrete is calculated on the basis of the standing wave normally incident to the concrete wall with averaging over both the time period and the wavelength because of the very short time period of microwaves compared to the period of temperature waves and the heterogeneity of concrete. The reinforcing bars parallel to the surface arc treated as a smeared steel layer. The microplane model M4 is used as the constitutive model for nonlinear deformation and distributed fracturing of concrete. The aim of this study is to determine the required microwave power and predict whether and when the contaminated surface layer of concrete spalls off. The effects of wall thickness, reinforcing bars, microwave frequencies and power are studied numerically. As a byproduct of this analysis, the mechanism of spalling of rapidly heated concrete is clarified.