On November 4th, China’s first heavy water research reactor (“101” Reactor) was decommissioned and received national project approval.
Reactor 101 is the first heavy water research reactor to be decommissioned in China. It has established a decommissioning capability system for research reactors, provided technical demonstrations for other reactor decommissioning, and provided technical support for decommissioning of nuclear power plants. In the 1980s, with Reactor 101 as the prototype, China built a 15 MW multi-purpose heavy water research reactor for Algeria, known as a model of “South-South Cooperation”.
Decommissioning of Reactor 101 is one of the key projects for decommissioning of nuclear facilities in China. This project is implemented by Decommissioning Engineering Technology Center under China Institute of Atomic Energy. It is divided into three phases and carry out engineering scientific research verification in parallel. The first phase is mainly the pre-preparation for the decommissioning and the removal of peripheral systems, which would lay the foundation for the next two phases of the project.
* In 1955, China introduced a 7000-kilowatt heavy water reactor (“101” Reactor) and a cyclotron with a diameter of 1.2 meters from the former Soviet Union. Construction of the 101 Reactor began in 1956 and reached its criticality for the first time on June 13, 1958. After nearly 50 years of safe operation, at the end of 2007, Reactor 101 were permanently shut down and entered a safe shutdown period awaiting decommissioning.
