A study of the decommissioning procedure of an activated structure through an evaluation of the decommissioning cost for a research reactor

As decommissioning of a research reactor and a nuclear installation requires a long period of time from the decommissioning preparation work to the site remediation, the management of the data generated during the entire period of decommissioning is one of the most important tasks. In particular, the data obtained from research reactor decontamination and decommissioning activities can be important resources securing the safety and economic feasibility for other research reactor decommissioning. The owner of the research reactor and nuclear power plant need to submit decommissioning plan to the regulatory body at the starting stage of the research reactor and nuclear installation decommissioning project. The cost plan for decommissioning and the method for assessing the amount of exposure to protect workers must be stated in the decommissioning plan. This paper introduces the DES (Decommissioning Engineering System) that can be able to manage the data generated in the process of decommissioning of the TRIGA research reactor, to calculate an amount of waste, to evaluate decommissioning cost after deriving unit work productivity factor, and to predict the decommissioning process in advance. To verify the usability of this system and data integrity through connections among the unit systems, it describes the process to calculate the decommissioning cost using the data generated in dismantling an activated bio-shielding concrete in the TRIGA research reactor. As a result of the experiment to calculate the decommissioning cost with the TRIGA research reactor structure, it was found that the calculations were done precisely without flaw as the purpose of the experiment. Therefore, the DES can not only be used for other research reactors decommissioning, but also it is expected to be applied to other research reactors in the future. As a decommissioning cost between an activated concrete and a non-activated concrete according to the method of the dismantling procedure was significantly different, a study regarding the dismantling procedure needs more research. •A DES (Decommissioning Engineering System) that can calculate an amount of waste and evaluate a decommissioning cost is introduced.•A study of the decommissioning procedure between an activated structure and a non-activated one was conducted using the DES system.•The DES can be used for other research reactor decommissioning and to be applied to nuclear installations decommissioning.