Reduction of Volume of BWR Plant Radioactive Wastes by Operating Condensate Demineralizers without Regeneration

Abstract

Since chemical regeneration of condensate demineralizers produces a large quantity of radio-active liquid wastes, reducing the volume of such wastes has become a significant concern.In Japanese Improvement and Standardization BWR's, by installing a prefilter upstream from the condensate demineralizer, and improving construction materials and method of controlling water chemistry, the crud and ion load on the condensate demineralizer has been reduced.
Since non-regenerated operation of the condensate demineralizer has been devised and tried on the No. 2 Unit of the Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Station (2F-2) with variable resin measurement during every scheduled outage and each fuel cycle. The result has been a reduction of the number of drums to be disposed of to 1/5 the previous number.