Kartläggning av ventiler innehållande Stellite i reaktornära vattensystem på Forsmark 2

Sammanfattning: In the process of a boiling water reactor, high-levels of waste and radiation occur, where almost all the dose per person of the radiation in Forsmark are due to the radioactive iso-tope cobalt-60. The reason is that the stable isotope cobalt-59 is converted to the radioac-tive isotope cobalt-60 due to neutron irradiation in the reactor. Since 2012, unusually high levels of cobalt-60 have been observed at Forsmark 2 which occurs from the material Stel-lite and is a very common sealant in valves. The major disadvantage of the material Stellite in nuclear power is the high concentration of cobalt-59. When grinding alloy surfaces con-taining Stellite, cobalt-59 is released in the form of abrasive dust if the effectiveness of sub-sequent Stellite alloys is poor. The consequences lead to increased radiation levels, which implies major financial costs and a difficult work environment in, for example, mainte-nance work.Today, there is no mapping of valves containing Stellite, which may result in the decon-tamination of Stellite not being requested and missing when a maintenance action in the form of, for example, grinding is performed. The completed mapping of valves containing Stellite is thus the first that has been carried out within Forsmarks Kraftgrupp AB for the priority systems 313, 321, 331 and 415.In this work, valves containing Stellite have been mapped along main lines in systems that come into contact with reactor water without passing ion exchange filters. Furthermore, the effects of how the grinding of valves alloy surfaces in the seat / cone affects the feeding of cobalt-59 into the reactor and the effectiveness of subsequent decontamination of Stel-lite after grinding was investigated.The work has been divided into two main moments; Status analysis and Mapping, which in turn is divided into several sub-moments. The status analysis gathered the information re-quired to perform the mapping. With the gathered information from the status analysis, mapping was then carried out and valves were inventoried in the priority systems.A total of 45 valves containing Stellite were found whose water flow is likely to end up in the reactor without passing ion exchange filters. A total of 13 valves containing Stellite were found, which are not detected by the chemical departments measurement points and whose waterflow did not pass ion exchange filters before the reactor for systems 321 and 331.During a decontamination of Stellite in a valve, only alloy surfaces in the valves are con-trolled and cleaned, which results in dust from grinding remaining in the other surfaces of the valve as well as in the pipe ends when the valve has been assembled prior to commis-sioning. Of the 45 valves containing Stellite which have been inventoried, grinding in theseat/cone have occurred in eight of the valves, but only two of the valves have been de-contaminated since 2010-01-01. Since no decontamination of Stellite has occured six of eight times after grinding, and only alloy surfaces are checked as well as decontaminated, the effectiveness of subsequent decontamination of Stellite after grinding is very low.Based on the results of the work, a number of improvement proposals have been present-ed for continued work to reduce the feeding of cobalt 59 to the reactor water and eventu-ally reduce the radiation levels at Forsmark's nuclear power plant.