Reactor surface contamination stabilization. Innovative technology summary report

Contaminated surfaces, such as the face of a nuclear reactor, need to be stabilized (fixed) to avoid airborne contamination during decontamination and decommissioning activities, and to prepare for interim safe storage. The traditional (baseline) method of fixing the contamination has been to spray a coating on the surfaces, but ensuring complete coverage over complex shapes, such as nozzles and hoses, is difficult. The Hanford Site C Reactor Technology Demonstration Group demonstrated innovative technologies to assess stabilization properties of various coatings and to achieve complete coverage of complex surfaces on the reactor face. This demonstration was conducted in two phases: the first phase consisted of a series of laboratory assessments of various stabilization coatings on metal coupons. For the second phase, coatings that passed the laboratory tests were applied to the front face of the C Reactor and evaluated. The baseline coating (Rust-Oleum No. 769) and one of the innovative technologies did not completely cover nozzle assemblies on the reactor face, the most critical of the second-phase evaluation criteria. However, one of the innovative coating systems, consisting of a base layer of foam covered by an outer layer of a polymeric film, was successful. The baseline technology would cost approximately 33% as much as the innovative technology cost of $64,000 to stabilize an entire reactor face (196 m{sup 2} or 2116 ft{sup 2}) with 2,004 nozzle assemblies, but the baseline system failed to provide complete surface coverage