Glovebox Dismantling Activities and Decommissioning Plan for Plutonium Fuel Fabricating Facility

The gloveboxes and process equipment used at plutonium fuel handling facilities have had to be replaced due to deterioration or the need to make changes. So far, their removal and replacement has taken place more than 30 times in Plutonium Fuel Center, Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute (JNC). In most recent dismantling activities, we removed four giant gloveboxes (total size, 110 cubic meters) which possessed equipment to recover plutonium from mixed oxide (MOX) fuel scraps. We have implemented a number of procedural improvements in dismantling activities and collected various kinds of data, including type and amount of primary and secondary waste from dismantling, relation between waste volume and work force, etc. Plutonium Fuel Fabricating Facility (PFFF) is one of the three plutonium fuel handling facilities in Plutonium Fuel Center, JNC. Its final mission to produce MOX fuels for the advanced thermal reactor “Fugen” Nuclear Power Station was successfully finished in 2002. Then, we started preparatory activities to draw up a Deactivation & Decommissioning (D&D) plan for this facility and to construct a database with the experimental data of glovebox dismantling activities acquired in the past thirty years. The D&D schedule for this facility can be broken down into three phases. Phase 1 (to 2010): Stabilize all the special nuclear materials in the facility and ship them from the facility. Establish new and effective decontamination and volume reduction technologies in order to improve existing methods. Phase 2 (2010–2015): Apply the abovementioned technologies to some of the glovebox dismantling activities and confirm their adaptability for the project. Draw up a detailed D&D plan which meets to various regulations. Phase 3 (2015–2020): Dismantle all the remaining gloveboxes in the facility and promote research and development of D&D technologies for future projects. Decontaminate inner surfaces of the building in order to reuse the building as a waste storage facility.