New decontamination techniques: chemical gels, electropolishing and abrasives

The decommissioning of nuclear installations requires decontamination techniques that are efficient, simple to apply and producing a small amount of wastes, which are easy to process. With a view to this, three decontamination methods, which appear to be particularly suited to decommissioning, have been studied. These three methods are: - spraying of gels carrying chemical decontaminating agents, - electropolishing with a swab device, - abrasives blasting. After parametric tests on non-radioactive and active samples, the industrial application of these methods in the dismantling of installations was studied. These industrial applications concern: - decontamination of pieces coming from the German BWR ISAR by immersion and gel spraying, - decontamination, mainly by gel spraying, and dismantling of the BRENNILIS bituminisation plant, - decontamination of part of the cooling circuit of the graphite gas reactor G2 by gel spraying, - decontamination of a component of the FBR SuperPhenix, using dry abrasives blasting. During the first three applications, generated secondary wastes volume and form were determined. 33 tabs., 16 figs., 12 refs