Decommissioning of the Windscale Advanced Gas-Cooled Reactor

Now that the Windscale Advanced Gas-Cooled Reactor has fulfilled its development role and has been closed down, it is planned to decommission it. While ancillary buildings will be put to new use, the reactor itself and its four heat exchangers will be demolished in a project extending into the early 1990's. A special remotely operated machine will be developed to undertake the demolition. The radioactive waste material (steel, graphite, concrete) will be handled through a special building to be built adjacent to the reactor, where it will be boxed up for disposal into monolithic concrete blocks suitable for sea disposal or land storage. It is hoped to deal with the midly active heat exchangers as integral units. The aim of the project is to develop demolition techniques and expertise which will be of value generally to the nuclear industry. Because of this, special emphasis will be given to data recording and dissemination of results during the course of the project. 10 figures, 2 tables