Decommissioning of Nuclear Submarines and the Interim Storage of Their Reactor Compartments

Abstract

At the end of the nuclear-powered submarines (NS) operational life, they have to be defueled, decommissioned, and their nuclear reactors have to be safely disposed of. Their specific decommissioning process may be adapted to suit the needs of the decommissioning and storage process of small modular reactors (SMR) and reactors installed in floating devices. This paper addresses: 1—the decommissioning of NS, 2—the safe interim storage of their reactor compartments (RC), and 3—proposes a multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) approach for the RC interim storage facility site selection process, all focused on the Brazilian case. This approach is based on the application of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP).