During Nordic Nuclear Forum 2021 Suppliers Edition Online, we will hear about ongoing dismantling projects and their experiences in Europe, such as Sweden, Lithuania and Germany. We look forward to fruitful discussions and your engagement with the speakers and fellow attendees.
End-of-life activities, such as decommissioning, goes hand in hand with long-term commitment in the same way as with waste management. All radioactivity has to be cleaned-up and the equipment, plant and other buildings have to be dismantled. In order to minimize the amount of waste and to increase recycling, effective waste acceptance criteria have to be developed and implemented. While proven and safe techniques for dismantling are needed, new solutions have to be developed by taking advantage of e.g. digitalization. The aim of the effort is to make decommissioning safer for employees as well as to reduce its total costs.
At the global level, many plants and research reactors are nearing the end of their service life. More than a hundred nuclear power plant units have now been decommissioned. Several hundred research reactors and other nuclear facilities are being shut down. Over the next 20 years, hundreds of nuclear reactors will be decommissioned.
The decommissioning of nuclear power plants includes several phases. Thus many different kinds of competencies are needed in a long-time perspective. This implies a variety of business opportunities for a number of actors. We also need a systematic competence development in the long run.