Demonstration test on concrete with epoxy resin coating using ultra-high pressure water jet decontamination technology

Tagawa, Akihiro; Tezuka, Masashi; Terakura, Yoshihiro*; Naito, Masayuki*; Miyajima, Kenji*

Proceedings of 21st International Conference on Nuclear Engineering (ICONE-21) (DVD-ROM), 6 Pages, 2013/07

https://doi.org/10.1115/ICONE21-16721

It is one of the most urgent issues to remediate the nuclear power plants contaminated by radioactive materials discharged following the accident at the TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi NPS. Concrete walls of nuclear power plants in Japan are coated an epoxy resin coating for easily performing decontamination. We experimented a cutting test in Fugen Decommissioning Engineering Center using maximum 280 MPa pressure and 30 L/min water quantity, ultra-high pressure water jet system and 40 m/min air quantity vacuum system. We are conducting a study of decontamination technology in environmental pollution using this decontamination system. This decontamination system has achieved a decontamination factor 10 to 100. Thus, we have confirmed the change in a cutting ability by changing parameters. Parameters are the water pressure, the water quantity and air quantity. The impact force for water jet is a function that contains the test parameters. We have considered it using this function. The results of the test showed that there is a correlation between the impact force for water jet and a cutting capability. This decontamination technology can decontaminate radioactive material of the surface adhesion contamination and reduce the amount of waste generated for a thin cutting. In addition, we have experimented that the water can be recycled by chemical precipitation. After we experimented flocculation test using aluminum sulfate and zeolite flocculant, we have confirmed that it can clean water up to the level of suspended solids 5 mg/L, in turbid water using zeolite flocculant. This suspended solids concentration can be passed to the water processing system in nuclear power plant. From the test results, we found that ultra-high pressure water jet decontamination technology has a possibility that it can be used for decontamination of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.