Stabilisation, Excavation and Segregation

Dismantling process equipment and supporting steel in nuclear cells is made complex by the requirement to carry out multiple steps in a hazardous environment where working times are limited. Eliminating as many of these steps from the dismantling process as is practical has the effect of accelerating dismantling, leading to improvements in productivity and reduction in cost and dose. The proposed approach is to fill a cell under decommissioning with low density loadbearing grout and void fillers which has the effect of stabilising and passivating the facility. Next to excavate the grout in layers, each layer exposing a manageable portion of pipe, vessel and steel for size reduction using tracked vehicles deploying standard cold-cutting tools. Materials are thebn removed from the cell into a purpose built access facility for categorisation using radiometric instruments before being packaged for disposal. This simplification of the process excludes the operator from the cell and renders avoidable several of the functional steps in the dismantling process such as characterisation, planning, decontamination and holding. The proposed approach is an end to end solution, starting with a cell under decommissioning and ending with a cell completely empty of process equipment and structural steel and ready for demolition, with all the waste arising