Page 195 - Neutrons for Sciences and Society

It really was a total reconstruction of the reactor. For this a
small project group was established under the responsibility, at Dautray’s initiative, of Jean-Paul Martin108, who brought in four CEA engineers he knew well. As I mentioned earlier this excellent engineer had a very important role in building the reactor,
which he probably knew more about than anyone. Moreover in recent years at the reprocessing plant at La Hague he had gained extensive experience in cutting up radioactive materials. This would constitute the most difficult part of renewing the reactor.
Jean-Paul Martin proposed a solution to achieve it. An engineering consultant (Technicatome) had been appointed but
it was the ILL who was responsible for the work which was delegated to Ekkehardt Bauer, then head of the reactor division. Most of the actual work was done by the ILL engineers and technicians. The whole team was involved, but in addition others were detached from the scientific sector. 24 members of staff were thus temporarily added to the reactor division. It was they who took out the original heavy water tank and cut it up to be stored as active material before replacing it with a new vessel constructed by the German company Zeppelin (Fig. 8.1).
The reactor could only be restarted on 6 January 1995. A number
of minor changes were made, such as removing the beta beam-
tube, as well as important changes, such as the introduction of
a replaceable anti-turbulence grid. Apart from the considerable
loss of reactor time the whole operation was very costly. The ILL
had been obliged to spend €23M on outsourcing and orders (for
an interim budget of €26.3M (FF 173.1M). The contribution of
the Institut staff, without which the costs would have been much
108 [2018 addition: In 2014, he wrote in French a detailed story of the reconstruction of the reactor. See http:// www.arill.fr/documents/2014-remplacement-du-bidon-reacteur/]
Chapter 8 - The Dark Years
186