Waste Technology Section

Decommissioning


Facilitating the transfer of sustainable technologies for decommissioning of facilities

Responsible Officer : Michele LARAIA

Details of Technical Documents:

TRS No. 444: "Redevelopment of Nuclear Facilities after Decommissioning"

Planning for re-use options for decommissioned sites is an important aspect of the decommissioning process. Early planning for site re-use can facilitate the operation-to-decommissioning transition, reduce the financial burden associated to decommissioning, re-employ workers and specialist staff, and alleviate the overall impact of decommissioning on the local community. The lack of early planning for re-use of contaminated sites after completion of the decommissioning process is often a hindrance to implementing decommissioning in a timely and cost-effective manner. This strategic inadequacy may be caused by insufficient knowledge of worldwide experience on industrial and other site re-development opportunities that were exploited successfully.

TRS No. 444 "Redevelopment of Nuclear Facilities after Decommissioning" provides an overview of completed decommissioning projects worldwide followed by successful strategies to re-use decommissioned sites for new purposes as soon as the nuclear facility is de-licensed. Lessons learned from these projects and practical guidance on factors creating re-use opportunities is highlighted. Operators of nuclear facilities, decision-makers at government level, local authorities, and environmental planners are important stakeholders in the site re-development process. Click here for PDF.

Among nuclear facilities needing attention in decommissioning there are underground structures, systems and components (SSC) of the different facilities. These underground features require special consideration for the following reasons. Firstly, due to the poor accessibility of these features, there are significant difficulties in physical and radiological characterization, deployment of decontamination techniques, and implementing physical disassembly and removal activities. Secondly, these types of components are situated 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. Thirdly, the bibliography on nuclear decommissioning of underground or embedded components has not received yet any systematic coverage, despite some of the technical difficulties that have been encountered in actual projects to date. In fact, the bibliography on this subject is comprised of rather sketchy and sporadic case histories on this topic. A report approved for publication is intended to draw attention to a neglected field and to collate/condense sporadic information into an overview of important factors and practical guidance.

TRS No. 439: "The Decommissioning of Underground Structures, Systems and Components"

TRS No. 439 "The Decommissioning of Underground Structures, Systems and Components" is to identifies and describes state of the art technologies and strategies for the decommissioning of underground SSCs situated at nuclear facilities, including characterization, decontamination, dismantling and management of the resulting waste streams. Click here for PDF.

The unrestricted or restricted end-state of such facilities is also a point of interest. Specific examples of SSCs addressed by this report include:

TRS No. 446: "The Decommissioning of Research Reactors: Evolution, State of the Art, Open Issues"

TRS No. 446 "The Decommissioning of Research Reactors: Evolution, State of the Art, Open Issues" addresses a subject area that was dealt with earlier by two IAEA publications, namely, Planning and Management for the Decommissioning of Research Reactors and Other Small Nuclear Facilities (Technical Reports Series No. 351) and Decommissioning Techniques for Research Reactors (Technical Reports Series No. 373). This publication updates those reports in view of the technological progress, experience gained and the progressive ageing of research reactors, many of which have already reached the permanent shutdown stage and should be decommissioned soon. It is intended to contribute to the systematic coverage of the entire range of activities that have been addressed by the IAEA’s decommissioning work in past years. The perspective of the report is historical, in that relevant issues are identified as solved, pending, or emerging. Much of the information provided in this report will also be of use for the decommissioning of nuclear power plants and other nuclear facilities. Click here for PDF.