System Chemical Decontamination Technology by the IF7 Gas

When we decommission the equipments contaminated by the uranium, both the dismantling process of the equipments and the disposal process of the radioactive waste will be carried out. However, costs of these processes will be very expensive because the dismantling facilities are required in the dismantling process and many radioactive wastes are generated. Here, if it is possible to decontaminate the equipments below the clearance level, the amount of radioactive wastes is reduced very much. As a result, costs of the disposal will be able to reduce extremely. Moreover, if it is possible to decontaminate the equipments before dismantling, costs of the dismantling will be reduced, too. In other words, the total costs of the dismantling process and the disposal process will be minimized by decontaminating below the clearance level without dismantling. So, we have developed new decontamination technology to decontaminate below the clearance level without dismantling. In this paper, as an example, we tried to decontaminate the uranium enrichment plant in order to reveal the practicality of our technology. In conclusion: we proposed new decontamination technology by the IF7 gas. And, as an example, we tried to decontaminate the uranium enrichment plant. As a result, we could reveal thatmore » our technology has the high performance which can decontaminate below the assumed clearance level: 1.0 Bq/g in the limited time. Finally, we simulated the amount of the radioactive waste for decommissioning the uranium enrichment plant. As a result, though a lot of radioactive wastes will usually be generated, we obtained the prospect that it is possible to reduced 85% of the radioactive waste by using our technology.« less