Development and testing of an experimental installation for protective closing decontamination in liquefied freons environment

The article describes a protype of a modular installation designed to decontaminate protective closing in liquefied freons environment (further — Installation) and its design development process. It describes in detail the laboratory modelling stage implemented to identify the performance parameters of the process and to select a formulation for a most effective decontaminant. The prototype installation was manufactured at the laboratory stage of protective closing decontamination in liquefied freons environment. It was assembled and tested at an actual radiochemical facility. A series of experiments has demonstrated the feasibility of further research with the obtained decontamination coefficients of up to 30 and 48 for α- and β-emitters respectively. In the future, the proposed waterless decontamination method is supposed to reduce the volumes of secondly radioactive waste by up to 300—400 times as compared to the commonly applied water decontamination approach.