The liquid waste at SRS contains various amounts of alkaline earth metals. Alkaline earth metals may compete with cesium for the available sites on the sorbent, thereby detracting from performance. However, not all the alkaline earth metals exist in the waste. For example, there is not beryllium yield from fission or from any alpha, beta or gamma decay. Both beryllium and radium exist in very small concentrations in the Tank farm.
Previous analyses show low concentrations of strontium in samples of liquid waste.
Strontium enters as both fission yields and tramp contaminant in added process chemicals. Calcium enters as a contaminant primarily from well water and is also added in the de-fluorination of plutonium. Barium derives from cesium decay. The authors could not identify any published analytical measurements for magnesium, calcium and barium of the liquid waste. In fact, no solubility prediction of calcium, magnesium or barium in liquid waste appears to exist.