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Innovative laser cutting reduces size of Magnox skips

TWI Ltd has supported Magnox Ltd to develop a first-of-a-kind automated laser cutting facility for the size reduction of nuclear waste skips. The facility has been commissioned at Hinkley Point ‘A’ nuclear power station, and was demonstrated by size-reducing three ILW classified skips. Compared with competing cutting technologies, the benefits of using laser cutting in this facility include reduced cutting times, significantly reduced secondary waste emissions, reduced dose uptake, and, as a result of these benefits, operating cost reductions.

Project background

Magnox nuclear waste skips have been used across the Magnox nuclear power plant fleet for storing and transporting spent fuel to Sellafield Ltd for reprocessing. Now the Magnox plants are being decommissioned, there are thousands of contaminated Magnox skips across the UK’s nuclear estate, which need to be decontaminated and disposed of appropriately. The baseline method for treatment and disposal of these intermediate-level waste (ILW) classified skips is to manually size-reduce them using reciprocating saws and place them into ductile cast iron containers for storage. From underwater characterisation it is known that around 60% of the remaining skips are classified as ILW, leading to the need for an automated size reduction process. Between 2011 and 2012, a joint programme between Magnox and Sellafield evaluated 12 potential size reduction technologies for this application, with fibre laser cutting technology ultimately singled out as the preferred technology.

Work programme

In 2013 a project was initiated by Magnox Ltd with the aim of developing, commissioning and demonstrating a remote laser size reduction facility at Hinkley Point A (HPA). The specific project objectives were as follows:

  • establish a prototype fibre laser cutting size reduction facility at HPA
  • size-reduce three ILW classified Magnox nuclear waste skips, of various dose rates, transported from Sellafield Ltd
  • develop a safety case for the fibre laser cutting facility
  • demonstrate the capability of the technology to size-reduce at least one skip per day. 

This project made use of TWI’s fibre laser cutting technology, which has been extensively developed since 2009 for decommissioning applications. It marks the first time in the UK that fibre laser cutting technology has been deployed for active decommissioning in a ‘production-like’ environment on a nuclear site. The project involved the successful size-reduction of three contaminated skips with specific activities of 10.3, 25.1 and 218 GBq/t, and generation of a safety case for implementation of the technology. The complete programme was delivered to tight budget and time constraints, taking 19 months to design, develop, deliver and demonstrate the facility.

The project results highlighted the following benefits for using laser technology over the conventional manual cutting approach:

  • five-fold increase in productivity, with the capability to size reduce at least two skips per day
  • four-fold decrease in secondary waste
  • reduction in dose uptake of >90%.

It is estimated that decommissioning of all the contaminated Magnox skips using the laser technology would provide a cost reduction of approximately £30m, supporting the cost reduction objectives of the UK’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA).

For more information, please email contactus@twi.co.uk

Avatar Ali Khan Principal Project Leader – Lasers

Dr Ali Khan is a principal project leader at TWI. He is in charge of all aspects of the development of laser material processing and applications and has been instrumental in the development of laser technology for decommissioning applications at TWI. He has successfully led many research and development projects for TWI Members and recently worked closely with Magnox Ltd to deploy a first-of-a-kind automated remote laser cutting facility at Hinkley Point A nuclear power station.

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