Reactor Decommissioning History
Maine Yankee
revised 19 October 2014

Overview

Maine Yankee (also known as MY) was a Combustion Engineering (CE) design commercial PWR power reactor. It had a generating capacity of 860 MWe and 2772 MWt. It operated from 1972 to December 1996. Reactor decommissioning began in 2000.

Reactor Decommissioning Specifics

Internals Removal
Internals segmentation started November 2000. All work was performed underwater and remotely. Abrasive Water Jet (AWJ) and mechanical cutting were used by Framatome. To reduce cross contamination, cutting began on the least activated components and progressed to the highly activated items (this approach has been done on other reactor D&D projects, but not always).

Reactor Vessel Removal
The reactor pressure vessel was removed whole in 2002. Low water levels delayed the barge departure from site until 2003.

Wachs Technical Services (WTS) cut the large piping to free the vessel from the bio-shield. This was done dry with minimal hands-on work.

Segmentation and Packaging Plan (S&P Plan)
Pre-site: ?
At site: ?

Key People
Don Huntly was the Project Manager for Stone & Webster.
Al Solano was Project Manager for Wachs Technical Services (WTS).

Contractors
Stone & Webster Engineering Corp. (until July 2000).
Framatome Technologies, Inc. (FTI).
Wachs Technical Services (WTS).
Bigge Power Constructors (internals rigging).
WMG Inc.

Comments
This was one of three underwater internals segmentations done in the USA using Abrasive Water Jet (AWJ) as the primary cutting tool (Ranch Seco will use AWJ but it will be done dry). This was the first and only one for Framatome. Start of cutting was delayed eight months in order to incorporate AWJ lessons learned from Connecticut Yankee.

Related Publications and Documents
No published technical papers have been found relating to the decommissioning of this reactor or segmentation of the reactor internals.

References
NRC's "Fact Sheet on Decommissioning Nuclear Power Plants" (web page 8/15/05).
NRC's web page as of 8/12/05.
MWG's web page as of 8/12/05.
Framatech's web page Press Room as of 7/6/05.
Framatome employees as of 8/05.
Wachs Technical Services web page as of 7/7/05.
Boothbay Register, Vol. 124- No.26, June 29, 2000.
Steve Kenny from Bigge, 12/27/05.

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