Comparative study of a glovebox dismantling facility for manual and remote glovebox dismantlement activities

Abstract

A giant glovebox-type facility called the glovebox dismantling facility was developed at the Plutonium Fuel Production Facility, Japan Atomic Energy Agency, in 1995 to dismantle heavy hold-up gloveboxes and recover nuclear materials from them, which was a concerning international issue in the mid-1990s. The facility allowed conducting remote glovebox dismantlement using remote devices installed in the facility as well as the conventional manual glovebox dismantlement by workers wearing air-fed suits and manually operating hand tools. The facility was operated from 1996 to 2000 for dismantling heavily contaminated equipment gloveboxes and operated from 2001 to 2006 for the technological development of glovebox dismantlement, including work segment data recording and remote method testing. This study presents the features and brief history of the facility and the primary dismantlement results. Subsequently, we evaluate the novelties of the facility from operational experiences in manual and remote glovebox dismantlement methods and discuss their characteristics. Furthermore, we evaluate the worker exposure dose based on the obtained data and confirm that the remote method considerably reduced the worker exposure dose. Finally, we show how these experiences are effectively fed back to the technological dismantlement development for our old glovebox facility decommissioning project.