Decommissioning of magnox Ltd fuel cooling pond facilities in the UK
- Magnox Ltd, Hunterston A, West Kilbride, Scotland (United Kingdom)
Magnox reactors were the first generation of nuclear power stations built in the UK; ten sites in total, of which, nine had wet fuel routes with cooling ponds. Five ponds are currently in a decommissioning phase; this paper will focus primarily on Hunterston-A (HNA) Site and the central programme of work which governs its management. During its operation, the Cartridge Cooling Pond at HNA was used to receive the spent fuel discharged from the Site's two reactors, it was then stored for cooling purposes prior to dispatch off site. The current decommissioning phase focusses on draining the 6500 m{sup 3} pond. Due to the Site's limited caesium removal facilities, a stand-alone effluent treatment plant was constructed to improve abatement and reduce the pond activity from 200 to 0.7 Bq/ml (β). This was necessary due to increased environmental standards introduced since the site had ceased generation ten years previously. Early characterisation and experience from other sites concluded that if the pond were to be drained without any treatment to the walls, doses to the Operators, during subsequent decommissioning works, would routinely be in excess of 1 mSv.hr{sup -1}(γ). An opportunity was realised within the Ponds Programme that if the surface layer of the pond walls were to be removed during drain-down, ambient dose rates would be reduced by a factor of 10; this would allow for more cost-effective decommissioning options in the future. Ultrahigh pressure water jetting was tested and proved to yield a ∼95% total-activity reduction on treated surfaces. Challenges were overcome in providing safe and secure access to Decommissioning Operators to perform this operation by means of floating platforms on the surface of the pond. As strategies to clear facilities to exemption levels are becoming both cost prohibitive and not reasonably practicable, work is now underway in the Programme to determine the optimum condition for entry into long-term quiescent storage, prior to final demolition. This paper will discuss the strategy and techniques which led to Magnox Ltd ponds to be of national and international interest to the nuclear community. (authors)
- Research Organization:
- American Society of Mechanical Engineers - ASME, Nuclear Engineering Division, Environmental Engineering Division, Two Park Avenue, New York, NY 10016-5990 (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 22535251
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: ICEM2013 - ASME 2013: 15. International Conference on Environmental Remediation and Radioactive Waste Management, Brussels (Belgium), 8-12 Sep 2013; Other Information: Country of input: France; 18 refs
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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