Prospects of remelting metal materials from shutdown nuclear power installations

The remelting of metal materials from decommissioned nuclear power installations may be used to reduce the volume of wastes, to fix radioactivity by building contaminated wastes into matrices with extremely low leachability and immense mechanical strength or by building them into the slag phase, to extract radionuclides from melted metal into slag, to recycle the metal, e.g., by reducing the contents of radionuclides by dilution below the level set by hygiene regulations. Metal recycling, especially the recycling of stainless steels is a very topical problem in the Czechoslovak nuclear programme. This mainly concerns reducing the concentration of radionuclides, converting 60Co and precipitating 137Cs in the slag to below the levels permitted by hygiene regulations. Briefly described are remelting methods used by the British Steel Corporation, Siempekamf Guss- und Reaktortechnik and Seri-Renault. (Z.S.). 1 tab., 6 refs