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Swiss nuclear power and the case for long-term operation
Designed for 40 years but built to last far longer, Switzerland’s nuclear power plants have all entered long-term operation. Yet age alone says little about safety or performance. Through continuous upgrades, strict regulatory oversight, and extensive aging management, the country’s reactors are being prepared for decades of continued operation, in line with international practice.
George D. Cremeans
Nuclear Technology | Volume 87 | Number 4 | December 1989 | Pages 745-754
Technical Paper | TMI-2: Decontamination and Waste Management / Radioactive Waste Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT89-A27667
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The March 1979 accident at Three Mile Island Unit 2 and the subsequent 10-yr cleanup generated ∼8706 m3 (∼2300000 gal) of radioactively contaminated water, herein referred to as accident-generated water (AGW). Although most, if not all, of this inventory could be decontaminated to acceptable regulatory levels governing river discharge and released to the Susquehanna River, a settlement agreement with the city of Lancaster specifically prohibited the utility from doing so prior to an acceptable environmental evaluation by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. To dispose of this large water inventory, nine alternative disposal methods were evaluated. This evaluation considered each method’s technical feasibility, environmental effect, cost, and public acceptance. On the basis of these criteria, as well as political and institutional considerations, disposal of the AGW by forced evaporation and collection of the evaporated solids was selected as the most acceptable method. The selected method is designed to provide a decontamination factor of 1000 to the radioactive particulates in the AGW. The system consists of (a) a vapor recompression distillation unit to distill the AGW in a closed cycle process and collect the purified distillate for subsequent release by vaporization, (b) an auxiliary evaporatory to further concentrate the bottoms from the main evaporator, (c) a flash vaporizer unit to flash the purified distillate to the atmosphere in a controlled and monitored manner, (d) a blender/dryer to produce a dry solid from the concentrated waste, and (e) a packaging system to prepare and package the solid waste in containers acceptable for shipment and burial at a commercial low-level radioactive waste disposal site. The projected time span for AGW disposal operations is ∼2 yr, allowing for scheduled availability of the 8706-m3 (2300000-gal) inventory and planned system maintenance time. The estimated volume of waste generated, packaged, and shipped during this operation is ∼145 tonnes (∼160 t). The waste conforms to the burial requirements for class A and transportation requirements for low specific activity radioactive material.