Chemical oxygen-iodine laser for decommissioning and dismantlement of nuclear facilities

Conceptual designs of a chemical oxygen-iodine laser (COIL) facility for decommissioning and dismantlement (DD) of nuclear facility is proposed. The requisite output power and beam quality was determined base don our preliminary experiments of nonmetal material processing. Assuming the laser power of 30kW, it is derived that the beam quality of M2 equals 36 required to cut a biological shield wall of a nuclear power plant at a cutting speed of 10mm/min. Then the requisite specification of an optical fiber to deliver the laser is calculated. It turned to be quite extreme, core diameter of 1.7mm and NA equals 0.018. The mass flow and heat balance of proposed facility is calculated based on our recent COIL studies. With the high-pressure subsonic mode, the vacuum pump size is minimized compared to the supersonic operation. Finally, the size of the facility is estimated assuming tow-hour continuous operation. It is revealed that such a system can be packed in five railway containers.