Decommissioning of an uranium hexafluoride pilot plant

The Institute of Nuclear and Energetic Researches has completed fifty years of operation, belongs to the National Commission for Nuclear Energy, it is situated inside the city of Sao Paulo. The IPEN-CNEN/SP is a Brazilian reference in the nuclear fuel cycle, researches in this field began in 1970, having dominance in the cycle steps from Yellow Cake to Uranium Hexafluoride technology. The plant of Uranium Hexafluoride produced 35 metric tonnes of this gas by year, had been closed in 1992, due to domain and total transference of know-how for industrial scale, demand of new facilities for the improvement of recent researches projects. The Institute initiates decommissioning in 2002. Then, the Uranium Hexafluoride pilot plant, no doubt the most important unit of the fuel cycle installed at IPEN-CNEN/SP, beginning decommissioning and dismantlement (D and D) in 2005. Such D and D strategies, planning, assessment and execution are described, presented and evaluated in this paper. (author)