Decommissioning of nuclear facilities; stages, strategies and future challenges: a review

Abstract

Decommissioning is the process whereby a nuclear facility, at the end of its economic life, is taken permanently out of service and its site made available for other purposes, such as parks, housing and institutions. Nuclear facilities needs to be dealt with, so that any contamination contained within may be disposed of without it becoming a danger to the public. However, there are challenges which cannot be overemphasized, these are, many different sites, fuel production, reactor site, reprocessing site, waste disposal, wide geographical spread, total estimated cost of decommissioning and clean up approximately. Decommissioning is characterized with some large scale capital projects which are associated with inherent challenges these are; complex with many technical challenges, strategies and plans exist for all the nuclear facility. The future challenges associated with decommissioning are acceleration, reduce cost and finding long lasting solutions to these unique technical challenges. To this effect, few solutions were recommended such as, accelerating (HOLISTIC APPROACH), reducing cost, finding solutions to unique technical challenges, maximizing Economic Recovery (MER), overcoming the variability of assets, planning and preparation, Knowledge and understanding of available technologies.