Dismantling A Nuclear Power Plant

As you read this, what was once the world's largest nuclear power plant in Zion, Illinois (just outside of Chicago), is being dismantled. The plant, which was opened in 1973 by Exelon Corp., was moth-balled in 1998 when it became unprofitable, and has been sitting, collecting dust (and making more radioactive dust) for the past 12 years. Exelon was paying about $10 million a year just to maintain the plant, but did not want to handle demolition itself.

Now, in a first-of-its-kind deal, Excelon has transferred custody of the plant to a private dismantling company. It actually took an act of the federal government to make this happen. A demoltion company called EnergySolutions stands to get nearly $1 billion in business by taking on the project which is being funded by money Excelon set aside from utility fees for just this type of plant demoliton they knew would be needed one day.

EnergySolutions has developed a four-step plan to dismantle the Zion nuclear power plant that will most likely set the standard nationwide as America's earliest nuclear power plants start to age and must be dismantled.

First, the spent fuel rods that are housed at the plant are placed into steel canisters which are lowered into a concrete sleeve. This concrete sleeve can withstand temperatures close to 1500 degrees, tornado winds, and direct impacts of objects up to the size of a car, traveling 125 miles per hour. The sleeves, of which there will be 61 at Zion, each weighing 157 tons because of the concrete's thickness, are placed within a three-foot thick slab of more concrete, the size of a football field. The sleeves are permanently housed at the site of the nuclear plant. Vegetation growth will be encouraged to hide the concrete casks and slab. Armed guards will keep people away. The casks and armed guards will theoretically be in place as long as there is still civilization around to coordinate it all.

The next step is to dismantle the actual concrete containment domes that sat over the plant's reactors and the reactors themselves, down to the small components, until nothing is left. All of the dismantled material will then be transported to a radioactive disposal facility in Clive, Utah. Each reactor and dome will produce about 4 million cubic feet of material, roughly enough to fill 800 rail cars.

Once in Clive, Utah, the 4 million cubic feet of material will be pulverized into fist-sized chunks and buried in above ground graves which, like the sleeves and slabs back at the power plant, will be monitored and secured for as long as society exists.

While the materials are on their way to Utah, crews then begin dismantling all of the remaining structures - office buildings, etc. - and once all of that material is hauled away, crews will plant large expanses of grass, hopefully making it look like the nuclear plant was never there.