Decommissioning of nuclear facilities is a complex process involving operations such as detailed surveys, decontamination and dismantling of equipment’s, demolition of buildings and management of resulting waste and nuclear materials if any. This process takes place in a well-developed legal framework and is controlled and followed-up by stakeholders like the Safety Authority, the Radwaste management Agency and the Safeguards Organism.
In the framework of its nuclear waste and decommissioning program and more specifically the decommissioning of the BR3 reactor, SCK•CEN has developed different software tools to secure the waste and material traceability, to support the sound management of the decommissioning project and to facilitate the control and the follow-up by the stakeholders. In the case of Belgium, it concerns the Federal Agency for Nuclear Control, the National Agency for radioactive waste management and fissile material and EURATOM and IAEA.
In 2005, BELGONUCLEAIRE decided to shutdown her Dessel MOX fuel fabrication plant and the production stopped in 2006. According to the final decommissioning plan (“PDF”) approved by NIRAS, the decommissioning works should start in 2008 at the earliest. In 2006, the management of BELGONUCLEAIRE identified the need for an integrated database and decided to entrust SCK•CEN with its development, because SCK•CEN relies on previous experience in comparable applications namely already approved by authorities such as NIRAS, FANC and EURATOM.
The main objectives of this integrated software tool are:
• simplified and updated safeguards
• waste & material traceability
• computerized documentation
• support to project management
• periodic & final reporting to waste and safety authorities.
The software called DASAO (Database for Safeguards, Waste and Decommissioning) was successfully commissioned in 2008 and extensively used from 2009 to the satisfaction of BELGONUCLEAIRE and the stakeholders.
SCK•CEN is now implementing a simplified release of the software for the management of the decommissioning of the THETIS reactor. Its decommissioning will start in March 2013 and will be completed by the end of 2014.
BELGONUCLEAIRE has been operating the Dessel plant from the mid-80’s at industrial scale. In this period, over 35 metric tons of plutonium (HM) has been processed into almost 100 reloads of MOX fuel for commercial west-european light water reactors. In late 2005, the decision was made to stop the production because of the shortage of the MOX fuel market remaining accessible to BELGONUCLEAIRE. As a significant part of the decommissioning project of this Dessel plant, about 170 medium-sized glove boxes and about 1.300 metric tons of structure and equipment outside the glove boxes are planned for dismantling. The dismantling works are expected to start in the second quarter of 2009. On account of stringent internal rules of alpha-containment during over 25 years of operation, there is no significant contamination of the plant, outside the glove boxes; that assumption has been confirmed by radiological surveys performed by independent bodies in 2001 and 2008. Therefore most of the materials outside the glove boxes that were not a priori destined for radioactive waste will be released without restriction on the basis of the applicable legal regulations in Belgium (ARBIS), along with the buildings and the plant site. In this paper, after having reviewed the different regulations in Belgium, the authors introduce the different options considered for release of materials, and the main decision criteria (process, safety aspects, radiological, etc) for the different expected types of materials (inert materials, metals, plastics, electrical cabinets and cables and electronics) are analysed. Besides the regulatory aspects, the technological and economical aspects are considered (as an example, comprehensive metal smelting is implemented, as a favourite solution because it provides with decontamination, homogeneization and volume characterization).
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