Withdrawal of radioactive wastes from Eastern European interim storage facilities. The examples of facilities in Chernobyl and Ignalina

In Eastern Europe solid radioactive waste are stored mostly at the NPP site in concrete bunkers. These interim storage facilities and the conditioning of the radioactive wastes do not comply with the state-of-the-art. The building structures exhibit age-related construction defects and the radioactive waste is predominantly stored unpacked, the wastes are only separated according to their radioactivity level. Therefore the radioactive wastes have to be withdrawn, sorted and packaged using modern technologies for transport into appropriate storage facilities. The withdrawal has to be performed completely with remote handling equipment. At the same time the existing buildings have to be toughened to support the additional loads from withdrawal equipment and shielding. NUKEM Technologies GmbH has finished the construction of one withdrawal equipment, the realization of two other systems are under construction or planned. The presented contribution deals with the different concepts in Chernobyl and Ignalina.