German Case Study – FSD Decontamination at Grafenrheinfeld NPP (International Case Study on Organization and Detailed Technical Aspects of NPP Outage Decontamination)

At the end of 2010 the German government decided on a life extension program for the German reactors for an average of 12 years. As a result of this, the operating company Preussen Electra decided at an early stage that FSD would play a key part in the refurbishment activities at its plants. Framatome was contracted to plan and perform the FSD during the 2010 refuelling outage at Grafenrheinfeld NPP, followed by a specific passivation treatment during the plant restart. Subsequently the German government made the decision to phase out its nuclear power program by 2022, however this Grafenrheinfeld FSD was done specifically as part of the lifetime extension program as proposed at the time. The FSD at Grafenrheinfeld involved the simultaneous decontamination of the complete primary circuit and auxiliary systems. Planning for the application was done in close collaboration with Grafenrheinfeld and Framatome which was monitored by an independent consultancy and the German technical inspection association, TÜV.