Decommissioning of the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor

The Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory was operated from 1982 until 1997. The last several years included operations with mixtures of deuterium and tritium. In September 2002, the three year decontamination and decommissioning (D&D) project for TFTR was successfully completed. The need to deal with tritium contamination as well as activated materials led to the adaptation of many techniques from the maintenance work during TFTR operations to the D&D effort. In addition, techniques from the decommissioning of fission reactors were adapted to the D&D of TFTR and several new technologies, most notably the development of a diamond wire cutting process for complex metal structures, were developed. These techniques, along with a project management system that closely linked the field crews to the engineering staff which developed the techniques and procedures, via a Work Control Center, resulted in a project which was completed safely, on time and well below budget.