Operating experience with the LLW-scrapping facility at KFK

The volume of slightly contaminated plant equipment such as piping, components, fittings, tanks, valves etc. increases proportionally to the growing number of on-line nuclear power plants, other nuclear facilities and their increased operating lifetime. This contaminated equipment mainly originates from retrofitting actions. Parallely, the nuclear power plants of the first generation are about to be decommissioned, producing also larger quantities of slightly contaminated component parts. Ultimate storage capacity is not available in the Federal Republic of Germany at the moment and the costs for ultimate storage seem to be very high in the future. Intermediate storage costs in engineered storage facilities are reasonably high as well. That is why priority is given to all measures which aim at volume reduction. This applies both to ultimate storage as well as to intermediate storage. It is therefore indispensable to develop and apply new methods and techniques to reduce the volume of the waste material to be stored. There are two ways to reach this goal: dismantling of the components and subsequent decontamination below the specified limit value which allows their reuse (unrestricted release); and volume reduction by crushing and high pressure compaction. The LLW-scrapping facility at the Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Center (KfK), operated by Transnuklea (TN) and Kraftanlagen Heidelberg (KAH) in a joint venture is described. The experience gained in the start-up phase and the first months of operation are reported. The results allow to evaluate the advantages of the above mentioned two ways of volume reduction in both countries, the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States