The preparation of segmenting the TRR reactor vessel internals with higher radiation

Abstract

Based on the approved Taiwan Research Reactor (TRR) Decommissioning Plan, TRR decommissioning task must be finished before March 2029, and the reactor vessel should be fully dismantled before the end of 2028. However, Taiwan has no experience on dismantling a nuclear reactor vessel and lacks the associated containers and equipments, especially those used for handling the internals with higher radiation. To reach the goal of dismantling TRR reactor vessel in time, Institute of Nuclear Energy Research (INER) has made the dismantling strategy and developed the associated containers and equipments. Concerning the personnel safety, these internals with higher radiation will be segmented under the water. This makes the equipments and container used for segmenting these internals and storing the segmented parts are hard to be accessed from the commercial market directly and need to be developed in advance. To cope with these challenges, INER has designed the underwater disc saw and band saw equipments to segment these internals and developed INER-LRW-C2 low level radioactive waste container to store and transport those segmented parts. Currently, these equipments used for segmenting these internals are under mockup tests, and INER-LRW-C2 low level radioactive waste container has been granted the usage permit.The content of this article briefly introduces how INER prepares to face these challenges and what it has done. This includes the TRR reactor vessel dismantling strategy and segmentation plan of these internals with higher radiation, the development of INER-LRW-C2 low level radioactive waste container, and the designs of these major associated segmentation equipments.