One of the most technically challenging reactor decommissioning projects in the UK, if not the world, is being tackled in a new way managed by a team lead by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. Windscale Pile 1, a graphite moderated, air cooled, horizontal, natural uranium fuelled reactor was damaged by fire in October 1957. De-fuelling, initial clean-up and isolation operations were carried out in the 1960's. During the 1980's and 90's a successful Phase 1 decommissioning campaign resulted in the plant being cleared of all accessible fuel and graphite debris and it being sealed and isolated from associated facilities and put on a monitoring and surveillance regime while plans for dismantling were being developed. For years intrusive inspection of the fire damaged region has been precluded on safety grounds. Consequently early plans for dismantling were constructed using pessimistic assumptions and worst case predictions. This in turn lead to technical, financial and regulatory hurdles which were found to be too high to overcome.
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