Fuel unloading work in decommissioning of the prototype fast breeder reactor Monju; First stage of Monju decommissioning project

Shiota, Yuki; Kudo, Junki; Tsuno, Hiromi ; Takeuchi, Ryotaro; Ariyoshi, Hideo ; Shiohama, Yasutaka; Hamano, Tomoharu; Takagi, Tsuyohiko ; Nagaoki, Yoshihiro 

In the first stage of Monju decommissioning project, fuel unload work began to be carried out. There are two tasks in this work. One is Fuel Treatment and Storage work that gets rid of sodium on the fuel assemblies unloaded from Ex-Vessel fuel Storage Tank (EVST) and carries it in the storage pool, and the other is Fuel Unloading that the fuel assemblies in the reactor core is replaced with dummy fuels and stored in EVST. Fuel Treatment and Storage work and Fuel Unloading work are performed alternately, and 370 fuel assemblies in the core and 160 fuel assemblies in EVST are all carried to the storage pool. Monju had a large amount of sodium in the reactor vessel and EVST, and there was a residual risk of fuel failure due to the superposition of a large scale sodium fire. Therefore, in the first stage of the Monju decommissioning project, it was decided to take about 5.5 years to remove the residual risk by storing all the fuel rods in the fuel storage pool. There are few Fuel handling system of Sodium Fast Reactor in the world, so the driving record and experience are not enough. So, events that occur even if taken measure are assumed. The following three events apply to this; first, events that are difficult to prevent, events. Second, that are due to lack of experience, and final, events optimization of system is not enough. Plans were taken to suppress these events. This report summarizes the "Monju decommissioning project" work conducted so far in all four campaigns.