DISASSEMBLY OF THE PLUTONIUM TEST RIG PUT E

The Plutonium Test Facility Pute was set into operation in 1980 and re presented an investment of 20 billions of DM. In the eighties it had b een the largest glovebox installation for pulsed, its disassembly took about two years and amounted to 8,5 billions of DM what is Purex Proc ess, equipped with five pulsed columns 10 m in height. The whole insta llation needed about 200 m(3) of box volume and a steel housing with s everal floors. The tests performed in at least two shift operations pe r year ended 1991 and aimed at the optimization of Plutonium refining by means of electrochemical valency adjustment and extractive separati on in one piece of apparatus, which was a combined process developed i n the former Nuclear Research Center of Karlsruhe. With a fixed invent ory of 4 kg of Pu, a total amount of 390 kg of this energy carrier had been treated. These R + D-activities were closely connected to the Wa ckersdorf fur Wiederaufarbeitung abgebrannter Kernbrennstoffe. The adv antages of this combined process, such as drastically reduced radwaste volumes, increased seperation efficiency for Plutonium and a reductio n of the plant size, could be demonstrated so successfully that DWK to ok an option on this development.