A Technical Support Mission of the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO) completed its work at Chernobyl NPP on June 19, 2015. The activity was held on request of ChNPP and was devoted to the issues of liquid radioactive waste (LRW) management.
Specialists from P. K. Invest and Dukovany NPP (the Czech Republic), VUJE (Slovakia) and Ignalina NPP (Lithuania) arrived to the Chernobyl NPP within the expert group.
By opening the Mission work, a Deputy Technical Director for RAW Management Andrii Poiarkov gave information about the current state of LRTP project activities, the problematic issues that were revealed during the facility testing and their solving. Radioactive sorbents (spent ion-exchange resins and filter perlite) and sludge management is one of such issues. Individual tests of LRTP process equipment have shown that treatment of such type of waste as filter perlite and sludge results in intensive mechanical wear of cementation system equipment, while the accepted formulas of final product using cement as binding material envisage low (15-20%) filling of ion-exchange resins, filter perlite and sludge in a package, that leads to the increase of a number of packages to be transported for disposal. The SSE ChNPP specialists prepared Solution “On sequence of LRW treatment at SSE Chernobyl NPP LRTP” No.03-13-ЦПРАО, where the necessity of further development of sorbents and sludge treatment technology is determined as one of the tasks at the initial stage of LRTP operation.
In 2013 the Czech and Slovakian specialists proposed a new technology for waste immobilization for the SSE ChNPP. It had been approved by the nuclear and radiation safety regulatory body of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The technology is used at the Czech and Slovakian NPPs. It is based on use of RAW treatment mobile facilities and geopolymers as binding material for solidification of liquid radioactive waste. It is more efficient as compared to the waste cementation and bituminization methods.
Development of a technical specification on creating a facility for treatment of sorbents, filter perlite pulp and sludge was a result of the conducted work. The specification was reviewed by the IAEA experts and recommended for implementation with placement of equipment at the LRTP.
So all these issues were considered by the Mission participants with the purpose to develop and give their recommendations.
Within the Mission the experts were familiarized with technological processes of RAW management at the ChNPP industrial site, visited the Liquid Radioactive Waste Treatment Plant, RAW storage facilities, as well as the Arch assembling site.
FYI. Nowadays all operators of nuclear power plants are members of WANO. The WANO acts independently from state and regulatory authorities and works exclusively for and on behalf of its members that are NPPs. There are peer reviews, technical support missions, exchange of information on events and other joint programs within the WANO framework between nuclear power plants of different countries. The WANO structure includes four Regional Centres in Moscow, Atlanta, Paris and Tokyo. The WANO Moscow Centre unites nuclear power plants of Russia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Cuba, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine, Finland, the Czech Republic, China and Iran. The WANO coordinating center is located in London.
