First concrete poured for the new interim storage building for class-A radwaste

Electrabel completed the first stage of the property transfer to the State Agency ONDRAF/NIRAS of its nuclear waste conditioned on the Tihange site during the period 1981-1991 (July 2001)

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Electrabel entrusted Tractebel Energy Engineering with the task of drawing up process sheets for the radwaste conditioned on the Tihange site between 1981 and 1991. These process sheets describe to the best possible extent all the types and contents of conditioned waste drums, as well as the related treatment and conditioning installations.

Since 22.11.91 the treatment and conditioning facilities for all nuclear waste produced in Belgium must, by law, be qualified by ONDRAF/NIRAS, the Belgian Agency for Radioactive Waste and Enriched Fissile Materials. This legal requirement does not apply to radwaste conditioned before the Royal Decree came into force. Nevertheless, Electrabel, the Belgian utility, agreed to provide ONDRAF/NIRAS with process sheets in order to ensure the further safe management of the radwaste conditioned at its nuclear power plants before 22.11.91.

Tractebel Energy Engineering carried out the project in close co-operation with Tihange NPP's waste processing department. It consisted mainly of retrieving the most accurate information about the conditioned drums, i.e. when data record requirements were far from what they are today. The main sources that were used are the minutes of the drum removal requests, the operational procedures used at the time, the conditioning logbooks and the services and/or goods supply orders.

All the necessary information was synthesized in a file with 27 process sheets covering the whole production of conditioned waste drums at the Tihange site during the period concerned. This file was handed over to ONDRAF/NIRAS in April 2001.

After a thorough examination, by mid-May 2001 ONDRAF/NIRAS notified its agreement with the content of the process sheets file. In the concluding statement of the corresponding notification letter, they declared "Finally, we wish to compliment you again for the investigation and synthesis work that was carried out, and thank you for the editorial quality of the file you transmitted us".

For Electrabel, our customer, the agreement on this file is an important milestone in order to transfer the property of its nuclear waste to ONDRAF/NIRAS. The completion of this work constitutes the basis to perform the radiological characterization of the drums content currently on-going with our in-house developed LLWAA (Low Level Waste Activity Assessment) and DECL (Generation of waste declaration forms) softwares.

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