MEGAPIE on the way to PIE

The MEGAPIE target was the first liquid metal target ever operated in the Megawatt regime, at a power level of 0.8 MW. The LBE target has successfully been irradiated in a period from August until December 2006. During this time the spallation target received a beam charge of 2.8 Ah of 590 MeV protons. After the successful operation of the target it has been stored in the target storage facility of PSI, waiting for its post irradiation examination, PIE. In the time since the end of 2006 several campaigns of tests have been conducted by PSI and interim storage facility of Swiss nuclear power plants - ZWILAG - in the hot cells of ZWILAG. In these tests the feasibility of the conditioning of the target and the extraction of sample material for the PIE has been proven. It is planned to start the dismantling of the MEGAPIE target in June 2009. The dismantling campaign will last until the end of 2009. The PIE activities are foreseen to start in late 2009 or early 2010. In this paper we report on the outcome of all cold tests of the dismantling that have been done. In addition a detailed description of the procedure of dismantling and sample taking of MEGAPIE will be given. (author)