​The success of clean-up and dismantling projects in end-of-life nuclear facilities is a crucial issue for the nuclear industry, both from a nuclear safety and an economic perspective, which are vital conditions for gaining credibility in the eyes of the public. These projects must overcome several obstacles: on a strategic level, they require long-term planning and rigorous management of the risks and priorities, on an operational level, they require a great deal of upstream preparation in terms of inventories, investigations, maps, feasibility studies and data management, on an organisational level, synergy must be created between the professions, operation, project management and R&D. Clean-up and dismantling projects are characterised by a broad range of situations: a reactor, a fuel cycle plant and a damaged nuclear facility are not dismantled in the same way.

This monograph provides insight into the techniques used to characterise facilities, carry out clean-up and dismantling operations, and manage the waste resulting from these operations. It also gives several examples of clean-up and dismantling sites led by the CEA, which already boasts a number of successful projects to date, either as project owner for the clean-up and dismantling of its own facilities, or as R&D operator in support of industry players.

Summary

• Introduction
• Assessment of the radiological, physical and chemical state of the facility to be cleaned up or dismantled - Characterisation techniques
  
• operations in hostile environments
  
• Treatment and decontamination of structures, soils and effluents
  
• Treatment of clean-up and dismantling waste
  
• Operating experience in clean-up and dismantling
  
• Dismantling: the special case of severe accidents
  
• Conclusion