Development of decontamination techniques for decommissioning commercial nuclear power plants

NUPEC has been developing various techniques to safely and efficiently decommission large commercial nuclear power plants. The development work, referred to as the verification tests, has been performed since 1982. The verification tests on decontamination techniques have focused on the reduction of both occupational radiation exposure and radioactive waste volume. Experiments on various decontamination methods have been carried out. Prospects of applying efficient decontamination techniques to commercial nuclear power plant decommissioning are bright due to the experimental results.