Decommissioning and waste

Large amounts of infrastructure from the UK civil nuclear programme are to be
decommissioned over the next 50+ years. During the decommissioning process it is often desirable to remove surface contamination in order to reduce hazard to workers and simplify further processing operations (e.g. providing man access for cutting and size reduction operations). Wet decontamination procedures are commonly employed for this purpose, which generate large volumes of liquid effluent. Management and disposal of effluent is a limiting factor in deployment of wet decontamination processes. This project looks to develop an existing electrochemical technology, in an innovative way, to manage the effluent at source to permit the use of the most effective decontamination solutions. The use of such reagents will speed up decommissioning and reduce decommissioning costs.