Segmentation planning – Integration of waste management issues in decommissioning

One of the most challenging aspects of the decommissioning of a retired commercial reactor is optimizing the waste activities to reduce cost and dose while also benefiting schedule. The optimization of waste requires not only a rigorous assessment of the decommissioning inventories and the waste disposition options, but also a conceptualization of the segmentation and packaging. There have been significant advances in these aspects over the course of work performed at NPP decommissioning projects, which benefited schedule, cost and dose control. A well-conceived segmentation and waste packaging plan can significantly reduce the duration and cost of D&D project execution making it pivotal to stakeholders for the initial planning development and the estimation of decommissioning costs. Starting from a clear and concise set of objectives relative to segmentation, packaging and disposition of the reactor assemblies. An appropriate segmentation approach should be developed that identifies the radiological characteristics and number of segments for each component, optimizes packaging efficiency, keeping the total number of waste containers required to a minimum, minimizes radiation exposure to workers, and minimizes generation of secondary waste. This paper discusses this process and how advances in computer modeling have advanced concept tool development resulting in efficient collaborative segmentation planning and optimization of the resulting waste packaging and disposal efficiency.