Fuel crushing plant dismantled

October 28, 2008

Another legacy of Dounreay’s commercial fuel-reprocessing past has now been dismantled. 

During the 1990s, UKAEA constructed specialised plant to recover highly enriched uranium from 70 tonnes of THTR fuel spheres received from Germany.

Now the glovebox used to crush the graphite-coated spheres is the first part of the separation process line to be taken apart.

After being thoroughly cleaned inside to remove all traces of the radioactive graphite dust, the glovebox could be emptied and dismantled by workers in protective air-fed suits, using industrial power tools.

As a result of careful decontamination techniques, most of the waste was sentenced as low level waste.
 

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