Decommissioning Of Underground Structures Systems And Components

Decommissioning of Underground Structures, Systems and Components

Among the facilities needing attention in decommissioning are underground facilities. These require special consideration and are the subject of this report. Firstly, due to their poor accessibility, there are significant difficulties in physical and radiological characterization, deployment of decontamination techniques, and physical disassembly and removal. Secondly, these types of components are present in a large number of nuclear installations. However, early nuclear design and construction practices often did not consider or incorporate eventual decommissioning requirements in their design considerations, and these requirements were not commonly enforced in the early nuclear era. This is also true for those facilities situated in countries that do not have sufficient expertise in performing decommissioning. Thirdly, a comprehensive assessment of the literature on nuclear decommissioning of underground components shows that this subject has not yet received any systematic coverage, despite the technical difficulties that have been encountered in actual projects to date. This report is intended to draw attention to a neglected field and to collate and condense sporadic information into an overview of important factors and practical guidance.

Decommissioning of Underground Structures

Nuclear Decommissioning

This book discusses the history of nuclear decommissioning as a science and industry. It explores the early, little-known period when the term “decommissioning” was not used in the nuclear context and the end-of-life operations of a nuclear facility were a low priority. It then describes the subsequent period when decommissioning was recognized as a separate phase of the nuclear lifecycle, before bringing readers up to date with today’s state of the art. The author addresses decommissioning as a mature industry in an era in which large, commercial nuclear reactors and other fuel-cycle installations have been fully dismantled, and their sites returned to other uses. The book also looks at the birth, growth and maturity of decommissioning, focusing on how new issues emerged, how these were gradually addressed, and the lessons learned from them. Further, it examines the technologies and management advances in science and industry that followed these solutions. Nuclear Decommissioning is a point of reference for industry researchers and decommissioning practitioners looking to enrich their knowledge of decommissioning in recent decades as well as the modern industry. The book is also of interest to historians and students who wish to learn more about the history of nuclear decommissioning.