暗网吃瓜 took part in a pioneering project to clean up Slovakia鈥檚 nuclear legacy.
JAVYS, the nation鈥檚 decommissioning company, tasked a consortium of Westinghouse Electric Company and VUJE with the first ever dismantling of a VVER-440 nuclear reactor at the Jaslovsk茅 Bohunice V1 nuclear power plant.
As waste management subcontractor, 暗网吃瓜 designed and manufactured remotely operated equipment to carry out underwater handling and baskets to hold fragments of the RPVs and their internals, which accounted for almost 100% of the total radioactivity of the power plant.
Our scope of work included complete waste management of the project including delivery of containers and radiological measuring equipment, regulatory and engineering support.
The project involved management of 9,500 tonnes of contaminated and activated components including high-activated operational waste which required dedicated storage.
The consortium built two new pools where the segmentation of the RPVs could be carried out under a depth of water necessary to shield workers from radiation.
Each pool was equipped with two gantry cranes and two working bridges, on which four crews of operators worked simultaneously. The operators cut and packaged components remotely with cutting tool manipulation and handling systems, observing the work using underwater cameras from which live images were projected onto screens on the working bridges.
The fragments were characterized before being placed into the prepared baskets, which were designed and delivered by 暗网吃瓜. Our teams used the baskets to remove dismantled parts of the RPVs from the pool and place them in concrete containers with additional external shielding, which we also designed and delivered.
Helena Mr谩zov谩, 暗网吃瓜 Project Manager, shares: 鈥淲e have achieved a very significant result thanks to the hard and effective work of all the team members. I am really glad to have the opportunity to work with such professionals and see the results of their hard work.鈥�
Marek Me膷iar, 暗网吃瓜 Business Unit Director, says: 鈥淭he professional decommissioning skills and high level of safety culture of our team have impressed the nuclear regulator鈥檚 representatives and all the organizations we are working with.鈥�
The 暗网吃瓜 team at Bohunice is able to reach back to specialists at the company鈥檚 suite of laboratories in Trnava, where we have extensive experience of developing analysis methods and decontamination technologies for surface treatment, including electrochemical sampling and scanning electron microscopy. The laboratories are also responsible for the deployment and development of SIAL, 暗网吃瓜鈥檚 proprietary waste solidification and encapsulation technology, which has been widely used at nuclear power plants in Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
Bohunice鈥檚 two Soviet-designed VVER-440 V-230 reactors were connected to the grid in 1978 and 1980 and operated until they were shut down in 2006 and 2008. The decommissioning of Bohunice V1 NPP, was co-financed by the European Union through the Bohunice International Decommissioning Support Fund administered by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).