Chinon A2 heat exchanger dismantling strategy validated

⤢

Cyclife, a subsidiary of EDF, said the Chinon A2 dismantling project has reached a decisive milestone after the contractual strategy for taking apart the plant's heat exchangers was validated. It said the project came after three and a half years spent on studies by the Deconstruction and Waste Projects Department, known as DP2D, at EDF and by Cyclife Engineering, opening the way to the first operational phase in dismantling what it calls the world's first UNGG reactor.

Subject to a dismantling decree entering into force, the first operation will involve dismantling, in series, the equipment inside the four heat exchanger rooms at Chinon A2. Cyclife said the work will draw on lessons from dismantling the Chinon A3 reactor's heat exchangers.

Operations are due to begin in mid-2028, once a public inquiry into the UNGG dismantling strategy concludes; that inquiry is scheduled for 2027, and the project is expected to last six years. Stéphanie Proust, the EDF project manager for Chinon A-AMI, called it an essential step in preparing an exceptional industrial project that is set to be a benchmark for EDF's UNGG programme. EDF and Veolia formed the Graphitech joint venture in December 2019 to decommission graphite reactors, and its programme began in 2022 using full-scale models to prepare remote-operation tools.

This article was generated by an automated RADWASTE pipeline from the cited public source and checked by a separate machine pass against that source text. It does not replace the original; verify every fact against the linked source.