Nuclear Research Reactor RTS-1 “G. Galilei” Decommissioning: Preliminary Operations and Cutting Facilities

Abstract

The RTS-1 “Galileo Galilei” is an open pool research reactor with light water as moderator and coolant, it has a nominal power of 5 MWth and an average thermal flux of 5 E+13 n/cm2sec. It went critical for the first time on April 1963 and it was definitively shutdown in March 1980. The reactor is situated at CISAM (Joint Centre of Studies for Military Application - Italian Ministry of Defence), S. Piero a Grado, Pisa, Italy, and its decommissioning is in progress. In this paper the preliminary activities necessary to eliminate the most part of radioactive materials present into the plant are described. Emphasis is placed on the description of the “Irradiation Channel” facility, used to manage safely all the activated materials to be conditioned and on the MASCOT robot, used in the channel. All the conditioning devices to be used are described with particular consideration to the cleanness of the cutting process and the radiological risk due to the operations. The first cutting and conditioning operation carried on in the Galilei Reactor is described. This operation regards the conditioning of some experimental equipments used during the reactor life, with particular attention to the radiation protection of the personnel and to the control of radioactive emission.