On 11/1/2016 6:27 PM, Chris Hogg wrote:
On Mon, 31 Oct 2016 20:37:08 +0000, Mike Tomlinson
wrote:

In 2014 a barrel of waste from Los Alamos packed with the wrong kind of
cat litter exploded and contaminated part of the plant.

I have to admit I was quite shocked by that! Plenty of reports here
http://tinyurl.com/hb6hfyo Bentonite is an extremely fine clay
mineral, with a very high specific surface area (760 m^2/g IIRC), and
a very high absorptive capacity, so ideal for soaking up nasties such
as cat pee on the one hand or leaks from containers of nuclear waste,
on the other. It's often mentioned when nuclear waste depositories are
being discussed, for example at the Finnish site on the island of
Olkiluoto http://www.posiva.fi/en/final_disposal/safety

But that someone somewhere should have specified 'cat litter', or even
just used the words, rather than 'bentonite' specifically, opens the
door to the sort of mistake that was made at Los Alamos, as 'cat
litter' can be a whole range of things. It's not as though bentonite
is scarce: Wyoming is full of the stuff!
http://www.wyomingmining.org/minerals/bentonite/


It was, of course, "green" and sustainable kitty litter. So that should
have been alright, then.