Wachs Services and the NASA Glenn Plum Brook Station Decommissioning Story

In early August 2003, ‘Wachs Technical Services” removed three components known as Horizontal Beam Tubes. These tubes were metal pipes that ran through the side of the reactor vessel wall adjacent to the reactor’s core box and were used in experiments when the reactor was operational. Because these tubes contained a significant portion of the radiation remaining in the reactor vessel, NASA made their removal the first order of business during segmentation.

The Wachs crew removed the tubes in the manner they had practiced — remotely — operating specially articulated tooling, while looking into camera monitors to minimize exposure. The crew used a special air-activated table device to guide the tubes out of the side of the reactor and into one of the quadrants (Quadrant D) of the reactor Facility. Then the worker used a specially designed, remotely operated band saw to cut through the tubes, after which an overhead crane lifted the cut pieces out of the quadrant and into a stainless steel liner. The crew used a remote device to insert a stainless steel plug into the hole in the reactor wall and made use of a special Cask Transfer System (involving the large capacity crane, cart mounted on trolley-like tracks) to move the external ends of the Horizontal Beam Tubes into a dedicated area of Quadrant A. There they underwent further size reduction and temporary storage in the liner. The crew moved the “hotter” ends — the ones that had been inside the reactor tank in a specialized storage cask.

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