Glass & Ceramics Research Activities

Venue: Seminar room, via Sommarive 9, Povo - Trento, h: 14.00

• Miguel O. Prado, Head of Nuclear Materials Department,Centro Atómico Bariloche, San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina

Abstract

Research activities carried out at the Nuclear Materials Department of the Bariloche Atomic Center (Argentina) will be presented.
At the beginning, research activities were focused mainly on UO₂ sintering, for producing nuclear fuels. Then, glasses for the immobilization of nuclear wastes began to be studied; up-to-date three fundamental glass systems have been considered, namely borosilicate glass, porous silica glass and yttrium-aluminosilicate glass.
As a consequence of the works in nuclear wastes immobilization, the production of glass microspheres containing Y90 (beta radiation emitter), for selective internal radiotherapy of liver cancer was started. In addition, using porous glass microspheres are now used for delivering some molecules for chemotherapy.
Very recently, a certain interest on flash sintering of glasses and ceramics has been manifested.