Spent fuel assemblies and waste management at IEA-R1 research reactor

摘要

The IEA-R1 reactor is a swimming pool type research reactor moderated and cooledby light water and uses graphite and beryllium as reflector. The reactor is located at the Instituto dePesquisas Energéticas e Nucleares (IPEN-CNEN/SP), in the city of S?o Paulo, Brazil. The IEA-R1 is themost important Brazilian research reactor. It is the oldest research reactor in the southern hemisphere andone of the oldest of this kind in the world.The first start-up of the reactor was on September 16, 1957. The reactor operated until 1997 at a powerlevel of 2 MW mainly for basic and applied research, but also for the production of radioisotopes formedicine, industry and life sciences applications. Due to the increasing demand of radioisotopes formedical applications in the country, it was decided to increase the reactor power level to 5 MW and toextend the operational cycle to several continuous days. To achieve this goal, it was necessary to performsome system modifications and introduce new safety systems such as the Emergency Core CoolingSystem (ECCS) in order to obtain the license from the Brazilian Regulatory Body. The reactor obtainedthe authorization to operate at 5 MW on September 16, 1997.Brazil does not have a national policy establishing rules for the spent fuel storage and waste managementfacilities, as well as for their decommissioning process. Because of this, each facility has to manage thespent fuel assemblies and waste produced during its lifetime.This paper describes the control and management process of these materials in our facility and the planfor the future, including, the reactor decommissioning.