Final Reactor Dismantlement to Start in October

A formative part of NPRE’s history will come to an end in mid October with the dismantlement of remaining portions of the TRIGA reactor and the taking down of the Nuclear Reactor Building on the Urbana campus.

Rich Holm, Reactor Administrator, said the University of Illinois’ Reactor Safety Committee must first review all work procedures and quality assurance requirements before signaling a go-ahead for the project, constituting the removal of the building and remediation of all radioactive components.

Joining him on the committee are NPRE Emeritus Prof. Barclay G. Jones, committee chair; NPRE Department Head Jim Stubbins; David Scherer, Division of Research Safety Assistant Director; NPRE Emeritus Prof. Dan Hang; William Roy, Senior Geochemist of the Illinois State Geological Survey; and Tom Anderson of the Facilities and Services Safety and Compliance office.

LVI Service Inc., a Knoxville, Tenn., company, will lead a consortium in the $4 million project, scheduled for completion by June 2012. Engineering environmental firms Enercon Services, Inc., based in Tulsa, Okla., and Aecom, with headquarters in Los Angeles, Calif., will share in the work.

The main components of the reactor core were dismantled with the fuel removal in 2004. With the upcoming work, the fuel support structure will be removed followed by the concrete bioshield.

 

“First they will come in and remove the loose stuff,” Holm said. “Then they will build a gantry crane inside the building to remove the concrete.” In addition to the new crane that will run from the northeast to the southwest over the top of the reactor, crews will use the existing crane that runs north and south.

A 16-foot deep shield surrounds what was the reactor core, and a 7-foot radial concrete sheath weighing more than 1 million pounds surrounds the reactor’s water core. After crews remove the remaining reactor core assembly, they will use a diamond-abraded cable wire-saw to cut into the concrete. “A fair portion of (the material) is radioactive,” Holm said. “That’s why this is so complicated in the disposal and removal.

“Part of this process has been site characterization,” he continued. “We did a survey all over the building and drilled into the concrete bioshield to create a map showing where the radioactivity was and where it was not. This will all be verified before the work starts.”

The building and its walls are not radioactive, while some radioactivity exists in the building’s floor. Although the reactor pool still holds water, there is no radioactive liquid in the building.

Crews will separate the non-contaminated concrete from that which is radioactive. The radioactive material, estimated at 100 cubic meters, will be shipped to a waste facility in Utah. “The cost of the radioactive disposal is a quarter of the cost of the entire project,” Holm said.

Workers will encase the cutting operation with plastic shields, reducing any chance of the spread of radioactive contamination. Students and others will be allowed to observe. “We’ll have access to classes,” Holm said. “With prior notification, it’s okay to view this, and it’s educational. We will make it as much of a learning opportunity as possible.”

The contractors will fence the area outside the Nuclear Reactor Building to secure it, while allowing for loading and shipping.

“The final status will be a hole in the ground,” Holm said. “There’s been no specific decision as to what to do with the site once the building is down.”

The University of Illinois Advanced Teaching Research Isotope General Atomic (TRIGA Mark II) reactor went critical at 4 p.m., August 16, 1960. The university joined the elite ranks of campuses with research reactors when it dedicated its Nuclear Reactor Laboratory on October 21, 1960. General Dynamics Corporation's General Atomic Division developed the reactor. Richardson, Severns, Scheeler and Associates designed the building.

The original reactor core was capable of 30-40ms pulses of 1,000 megawatts, with a 100 kW licensed steady operating power.

The reactor was extremely popular; being used primarily “for the training of students in nuclear engineering,” but also as an “interdisciplinary facility,” with the “Departments of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Physiology and Biophysics, Physics and various other engineering departments” all competing for time in the facility. This resulted “in unduly long operating hours and extreme congestion of equipment,” according to historian Kalev Leetaru and his website work, UIHistories Projects: A History of the University of Illinois.

In 1968, the University approved upgrading the reactor and increasing its steady peak power to 1.5 or more, while making it capable of pulsing up to 6,000 megawatts. The University, the National Science Foundation, and the Atomic Energy Commission funded the upgrade that, in many ways, NPRE faculty and students designed. The $1,447,300 upgrade added 12,160 additional square feet to the reactor.

The reactor operated for 38 years before it was shut down in 1998. Fuel was removed in 2004.

The reactor facility was vital in the masters’ and/or doctoral theses of approximately 600 NPRE graduate students, and was a teaching tool for a host of the department’s undergraduates. Said Holm, who became a senior active reactor operator while earning his NPRE master’s degree in 1990, “Virtually every NPRE student between (1960 and 1998) used the TRIGA reactor.”

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Written by Susan Mumm, NPRE Alumni Affairs Coordinator/Editor, s-mumm@illinois.edu

Contact: Rich Holm, r-holm@illinois.edu