Safety of legacy radioactive waste

Abstract

The development of the nuclear techniques in Romania and the commissioning of the WWR-S research reactor belonging to the Institute of Physics and Nuclear Engineering -(NIPNE) demand to deal with the storage and disposal of radioactive waste. The institute decided to store the radioactive waste inside a building that belonged to the Defense of Capital City System named “Fort” which is located on the Magurele site. About 5000 packages were produced and transferred to the storage facility of radioactive waste treatment plant after decommissioning of Fort building. In the mean time a repository was commissioned and the most part of the waste has been disposed. There still were remained about 800 packages which, in time, became corroded. A huge effort was put in place in order to repack the waste for disposal. At the end of 2008, the whole amount of legacy waste have been treated, and disposed or stored. The paper describes the management of legacy radioactive waste from the storage facility of Radioactive Waste Treatment Plant.