Experience in Dismantling and Packaging of Pressure Vessel and Core Internals

Nuclear Company AREVA is proud to look back on versatile experience in successfully dismantling nuclear components. After performing several minor dismantling projects and studies for nuclear power plants, AREVA completed the order for dismantling of all remaining Reactor Pressure Vessel internals at German Boiling Water Reactor Wuergassen NPP in October ’08. During the onsite activities about 121 tons of steel were successfully cut and packed under water into 200l- drums, as the dismantling was performed partly in situ and partly in an underwater working tank. AREVA deployed a variety of different cutting techniques such as band sawing, milling, nibbling, compass sawing and water jet cutting throughout this project. After successfully finishing this task, AREVA dismantled the cylindrical part of the Wuergassen Pressure Vessel. During this project approximately 320 tons of steel were cut and packaged for final disposal, as dismantling was mainly performed by on air use of water jet cutting with vacuum suction of abrasive and kerfs material. The main clue during this assignment was the logistic challenge to handle and convey cut pieces from the pressure vessel to the packing area. For this, an elevator was installed to transport cut segments into the turbine hall, where a special housing was built for final storage conditioning. At the beginning of 2007, another complex dismantling project of great importance was acquired by AREVA. The contract included dismantling and conditioning for final storage of the complete RPV Internals of the German Pressurized Water Reactor Stade NPP. Very similar cutting techniques turned out to be the proper policy to cope this task. On-site activities took place in up to 5 separate working areas including areas for post segmentation and packaging to perform optimized parallel activities. All together about 85 tons of Core Internals were successfully dismantled at Stade NPP until September ’09. To accomplish the best possible on-site performance and to achieve a minimization of the applied collective dose rates, each on-site activity was previously planned in detail and personnel exercised each task at original size mock ups under most realistic onsite conditions. Planning was especially focused on an optimized size minimization and packaging concept to reduce the number of filled waste packages. The segmentation of components strictly followed a sophisticated cutting and packaging concept developed under consideration of possible cutting techniques, the resulting geometry and logistical conditions. Therefore, segments were post processed by hydraulic press and band saw in order to minimize their volume, where applicable.