DECONTAMINATION & DECOMMISSIONING | IGNALINA Supporting Ignalina
Michael Higgins gives an update on the training and consultancy support for the B1 Interim Spent Fuel Storage Facility at Ignalina
THE IGNALINA NUCLEAR POWER PLANT is situated outside a town called Visaginas in the North of Lithuania. Work at the site began in 1974 and Ignalina 1, an RMBK-1500, came online in 1983. Unit 2 was scheduled to start up in 1986 but was postponed for a year after the Chernobyl disaster and came online in 1987. Unit 3 started construction in 1985 and was suspended in 1988. It was demolished in 1988-2008. Among the terms of the accession of Lithuania to the
Michael Higgins Director,
Xacom Project Controls
European Union was decommissioning the power plant and in 1999 Lithuania agreed to close the remaining units. Decommissioning activities started in 2004 and are currently planned for completion in 2038, when the site will be ready for re-use as a brownfield site. The estimated cost is €3.4 billion. The programme of works in the Ignalina
decommissioning programme covers six areas: ● Emergency core cooling system water storage tank ● Turbine generators with auxiliary systems, feed facilities and heat supply facilities
● Reactor gas circuit and special venting system (1) ● Reactor gas circuit and special venting system (2) ● Control room, electrical equipment and deaerators heat pipe service/fire-fighting (unit 1 only) ● Reactor building.
Below: Ignalina nuclear power plant Ingrid Pakats/
Shutterstock.com
Challenges One of the problems in the programme of works was how to handle and store the spent fuel that remained in the reactors. The solution was a facility that became known as the B1 Interim Spent Fuel Storage Facility (ISFSF) where the spent rods would be removed from the reactor, contained, and transported to a newly constructed storage facility. The storage facility is approximately 1km from the main plant. The building will store around 18,000 fuel assemblies from Ignalina 1 and 2 in 190 metal and Constor containers for 50 years. After construction essential commissioning activities
ensured the facility operated as per specification and safety requirements. One of the key commissioning activities was cold trials where the equipment and operational systems
were tested, without the use of radioactive waste. This was successfully completed in September 2017 and an operating licence was granted by Vatesi, Lithuania’s State Nuclear Power Safety Inspectorate. With the operational licence in place Ignalina’s
management could plan for the final stage of the project: hot testing. This used nuclear fuel to test that facility operated within the parameters of design and operational requirements. Hot testing began in June 2017. With the ISFSF now commissioned, loading and
transportation of the Constor casks could commence. The Constor containers are constructed from fine-grained steel and a special concrete with shielding characteristics, sandwiched between an inner and outer steel liner. Three lids are used: a bolted primary lid, welded seal plate and welded second lid for permanent sealing. The spent fuel was extracted from the reactor and placed
into the housing within the casks with the aid of computer programmed laser-guided robots. Once the casks were filled, they were sealed and then lifted by a series of cranes to the loading bay for transportation. Each cask was transported via rail to the ISFSF, and
unloaded into the storage facility where they will be monitored over the next 50 years. To date, all Ignalina 1 spent fuel has been relocated to
the ISFSF. All fuel remaining in unit 2 is scheduled to be removed and stored by the 3rd quarter of 2022. The project is funded by the Ignalina International
Decommissioning Support Fund (IIDSF) managed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). The IIDSF is financially supported by the European Union.
Consultancy and training Xacom Project Controls was appointed in 2016 to provide specific consultancy and training as part of a consortium formed by Amec, Vattenfall and Tractabel for the decommissioning programme. One of the firm’s senior consultants relocated to Visaginas for the duration of the assignment to provide dedicated on the ground support. This included training around three core competencies: risk management; planning and scheduling; and earned value management (EVM). Xacom was instrumental in training staff and providing
guidance and support to upskill personnel to operate in different roles, enabling them to transition from working in the operational power plant to assisting in the decommissioning project. The planning training and consultancy revolved around Primavera P6 schedules and Xacom’s support in EVM included elements of teaching theory, practical training and delivering a range of EVM reports and outputs. The risk management intervention had several facet.
One was ‘down selection’ of software management and 32 pieces of software were down-graded as part of the overall simplification of software management process. ■
30 | October 2021 |
www.neimagazine.com
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