Reactor Decommissioning History
Fermi Unit-1
revised 14-FEB-2014

Overview

Enrico Fermi Unit 1 was a sodium cooled fast breeder power reactor. Over the years it had a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, a fuel melting incident, repair and recovery, and upgraded in output capacity. It achieved a generating capacity of 200 MWt and operated from August 1963 to September 1972. Full power days was less than 60 days (this has not been confirmed). The reactor was 14.5-feet (4.4-meter) maximum diameter x 36.3-feet (11-meter) tall. Unit 2 is on the same site and was operating during all decommissioning work to date.

Reactor Decommissioning Specifics

Internals Removal
Internals removed by mechanical cutting (rotary saw blade). Laminated plates made cutting difficult. This reactor is more complex than traditional (Zion, Crystal River 3, SONGS, Rancho-Seco, etc.) commercial power reactors. It has many more "Internals". With a few exceptions the internals were Class A waste.

Reactor Vessel Removal
Mechanical cutting was used to cut the vessel and "chambers" into sections. Work stopped in 2011/2012 before vessel removal was complete. Although some size reduction was performed, this cannot be called a true "segmentation". The lower reactor vessel was 9.5-feet diameter x 21-feet tall. However, it was part of a larger "vessel". This made removal in one piece of only the "lower" vessel a possibility (and still an option). The large vessel was surrounded by graphite blocks and a steel shielding structure.

Segmentation and Packaging Plan (S&P Plan)
Unknown

Key People
Lynne Goodman, Fermi-1 Manager.
Dan Breiding, Decommissioning Project Coordinator Fermi-1.

Contractors
Energy Solutions
Siempelkamp Nuclear Services, Inc. (SNS) for the reactor work.

Comments
Work stopped before completion of scope. It may be shipped off-site in large sections, but a final determination may not yet be decided. One source says that the Internals are grouted and preparing for intact removal, but that is questionable (we will effort for better details). Lessons learned from Fermi-1 mechanical cutting was applied to tool design for the RVI tools used at Zion.

Related Publications and Documents
Information on the actual work done will be listed here as they become available.

References
"Fermi-1 Chronology" available from Fermi-1 in early 2005.
A brief Fermi-1 overview that was available from Fermi-1 in early 2005.
Conversations with SNS March 2011 through Feb 2012.
NRC web page 8/15/05.
NRC web page 2/22/10.

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