After a five week design/fabricate/delivery cycle with frequent and significant specification changes, the Kurion system was assembled at Fukushima in nine days followed by one day of cold commissioning and three days of warm commissioning before hot startup with actual waste water.
“Anticipating the challenge to quality assurance posed by the highly compressed delivery and commissioning times, Kurion designed the system with redundancies for pumps, valves, and media capacity. For example, TEPCO has the option of not utilizing any of the Kurion system pumps if an increase to the upstream buffer tank pump discharge pressure is made; converting the system to a highly reliable electrically passive system. This improvement will be evaluated along with media and system life extension, return to improved pre-filtration media, installation of shielding on system feed piping to eliminate off-design flushing cycles and reduce dose for safe operator entry during vessel change-out, and other optimizations,” said Kurion Vice President of Engineering and Fukushima Project Director, Dr Richard Keenant. “Despite the challenging 8-week duration from project award to system startup, when operated in its design configuration the system removes approximately 99.999% of the cesium, the principal source of radioactivity, a performance that is expected to improve as salinity decreases.”
Headquartered in Irvine, California, Kurion operates an R&D facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and a test facility in Rolla, Missouri. Founded in 2008, Kurion is backed by energy investors Lux Capital Management and Firelake Capital Management.
