Decontamination and Decommissioning Experience at a Sellafield Uranium Purification Plant

Conference · Sat Jul 01 04:00:00 EDT 2006

OSTI ID:21208690

Prosser, J L ^[1]

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1. British Nuclear Group Sellafield Ltd, Sellafield, Seascale, Cumbria, England, CA20 1PG (United Kingdom)

Built in the 1950's, this plant was originally designed to purify depleted uranyl nitrate solution arising from reprocessing operations at the Primary Separation and Head End Plant (Fig. 1). The facility was used for various purposes throughout its life cycle such as research, development and trial based processes. Test rigs were operated in the building from the 1970's until 1984 to support development of the process and equipment now used at Sellafield's Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP). The extensive decommissioning program for this facility began over 15 years ago. Many challenges have been overcome throughout this program such as decommissioning the four main process cells, which were very highly alpha contaminated. The cells contained vessels and pipeline systems that were contaminated to such levels that workers had to use pressurized suits to enter the cells. Since decommissioning at Sellafield was in its infancy, this project has trialed various decontamination/decommissioning methods and techniques in order to progress the project, and this has provided valuable learning for other decommissioning projects. The project has included characterization, decontamination, dismantling, waste handling, and is now ready for demolition during late 2005, early 2006. This will be the first major facility within the historic Separation Area at Sellafield to be demolished down to base slab level. The lessons learnt from this project will directly benefit numerous decommissioning projects as the cleanup at Sellafield continues. (authors)

• Research Organization: WM Symposia, Inc., PO Box 13023, Tucson, AZ, 85732-3023 (United States)
• OSTI ID: 21208690
• Report Number(s): INIS-US--09-WM-06221
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE WASTES FROM NUCLEAR FACILITIES
42 ENGINEERING
DECOMMISSIONING
DECONTAMINATION
DEMOLITION
LEARNING
PERSONNEL
PIPELINES
PURIFICATION
SELLAFIELD REPROCESSING PLANT
URANIUM
URANYL NITRATES