State Enterprise Radioactive Waste (SERAW) hosted an international knowledge sharing workshop on decommissioning of shutdown nuclear facilities.
The event took place on the 7th and 8th of December 2016 and it gathered experts and managers from the three countries (Slovakia, Lithuania and Bulgaria) – recipients of grants from the European Union (EU) for decommissioning purposes. The implementation of the workshop was fostered by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development whose representatives also participated in the event. Experts from the Bulgarian Nuclear Regulatory Agency and Ministry of Energy also joined the forum.
This was the second meeting following a meeting in Slovakia in 2015. Having the forum organised at the KNPP site gave the Bulgarian host the opportunity to present and discuss in detail topics and particular aspects of the decommissioning activities being currently performed at the KNPP Units 1-4.
“I think that each of the countries and institutions, represented here, are facing various problems which will be openly shared, in order to find solutions in the common experience. And it is unique and I believe that it will benefit the professional community in the future”. These were the words of the SERAW’s Executive Director – Mr. Dilyan Petrov during his opening speech.
In the course of the two-day workshop, the participants discussed issues related to: Decommissioning Planning; Critical path analysis; Decommissioning cost estimate; Risk management and contingency planning; Construction of infrastructure and facilities required for safe decommissioning, etc. Each topic was followed by lively discussions, during which the three analogical projects were compared in terms of the technical and management approaches applied for their implementation.
As part of the programme, the participants visited Turbine Hall of Units 1-4, the newly built sites for storage of decommissioning materials, Size Reduction and Decontamination Workshop, which is yet to be commissioned, as well as the operational Plant for processing of RAW generated from the Nuclear Power Plant operation.
