Idea: an integrated set of tools for sustainable nuclear decommissioning projects

Decommissioning of nuclear installations constitutes an important challenge and shall prove to the public that the whole nuclear life cycle is fully mastered by the nuclear industry. This could lead to an easier public acceptance of the construction of new nuclear power plants. When ceasing operation, nuclear installations owners and operators are looking for solutions in order to assess and keep decommissioning costs at a reasonable level, to fully characterise waste streams (in particular radiological inventories of difficult-to-measure radionuclides) and to reduce personnel exposure during the decommissioning activities taking into account several project, site and country specific constraints. In response to this need, Tractebel Engineering has developed IDEA (Integrated DEcommissioning Application), an integrated set of computer tools, to support the engineering activities to be carried out in the frame of a decommissioning project. IDEA provides optimized solutions from an economical, environmental, social and safety perspective. (authors)