Waste Treatment Facility

After completion of the Storage and Treatment Building for High-level Radioactive Waste (Dutch acronym; HABOG) at the COVRA side in Borsele. The Netherlands, in the year 2003, the stock of high-active nuclear waste at ECN/NRG will have to be made ready for transport to, and storage in this new building. To this purpose a Waste Treatment Facility will have to be built in the Hot cell Laboratories at NRG. To minimise the amount of waste and to guarantee the stability to the future the waste will have to be conditioned in a number of steps. After opening of the present waste drums a manual selection of high-active and intermediate-active waste will have to be performed remotely. To this purpose the Waste Treatment Facility will be equipped with a gamma camera, a cutting device, and other additional tools. The intermediate-level waste will be transported as usual. In the past PVC containing materials were also disposed of in the same high-level environment. Due to the high gamma field of in particular '' 60 Co this PVC has disintegrated into a tar-like product and chlorine gas. In due course and in reaction with water this provides an aggressive chemical environment unsuited for long term intermediate storage. Therefore a dedicated facility will be developed and integrated into the new Waste Treatment Facility to separate this PVC contamination from the high-active waste. To avoid any contamination at the HABOC-facility, the exterior of the waste storage canisters must fulfill severe decontamination criteria. This inhibits the loading of the waste canister into the active part of the Waste Treatment Facility. In stead only the interior will come in contact with the active environment by means of an opening and an appropriate seal Before the waste canister is loaded into the transport container it will be checked for external contamination and the dose rate, the nuclide inventory, and the weight will have to be measured. (Author)