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As the first round of nuclear plant decommissionings begin, and a decade after the end of the cold war, opportunities exist for companies with the expertise necessary for decontaminating and decommissioning nuclear facilities, including both commercial nuclear reactors and the legacy from the DOE Weapons Complex.

Framatome Technologies' years of involvement in nuclear energy make the company particularly suited to playing a role in this emerging business.

The FTI Decontamination & Decommissioning group has performed work or is in the pre-deployment phase for performing work at commercial reactors being decommissioned. FTI's contracted work includes segmenting reactor vessel internals, cutting loose major components, fuel inspection and materials characterization.

Maine Yankee Internals Segmentation
This past spring FTI was awarded a contract to segment the reactor vessel internals of the decommissioned Maine Yankee plant, the group's largest project to date.

"In this highly technical aspect of the plant's decommissioning, FTI will segment the reactor vessel internals using a combination of abrasive waterjet and mechanical cutting. Then we will package the segmented internals and secondary cutting waste for disposal," said FTI's Bob Twilley, Manager of D&D. The segmentation will be performed remotely inside the refueling cavity, under water to minimize personnel radiation exposure.

The segmenting of internals at Maine Yankee is scheduled to begin this spring and take approximately eight months on site. This type of work is unlike FTI's traditional outage work where schedules are driven by the customer's desire to resume electricity production as quickly as possible. FTI has been at work on pre-deployment preparations for six months, including design activities, qualifications testing and placing orders for required major equipment.

FTI has turnkey responsibility for this technically challenging step of the Maine Yankee plant D&D, as a subcontractor to Stone and Webster Construction Company (S&W), which has overall responsibility for the Maine Yankee D&D.

FTI has supported S&W in the development of a unique reactor pressure vessel packaging and internals segmentation plan for Maine Yankee. Based on this plan, FTI will apply innovative abrasive waterjet cutting, segmentation sequencing and waste processing techniques in order to meet the challenges presented at Maine Yankee.

"The challenges at Maine Yankee result from limited available workspace in the refueling cavity, the geometry of the internals, the radioactivity of the materials and the need to minimize both radiological dose and secondary waste disposal volume," said Sue Coleman, FTI's Project Engineer for the project.

FTI has also developed a process to contain and collect the waste resulting from the cutting, and is responsible for maintaining water clarity and refueling cavity cleanliness during and after the internals segmentation process.

"We are excited about this major project as Framatome Technologies' continues its movement into the D&D services arena," said FTI President Lyle Bohn. "The award of this technically challenging project shows the industry recognizes our expertise in this area."