An Analytical Technique to Determine the Potential for Moisture Accumulation in Deactivated Structures

This paper describes an analytical technique developed to predict an order of magnitude volume of moisture accumulation in massive structures after deactivation. This work was done to support deactivation of a Department of Energy nuclear materials processing facility. The structure is a four-story, concrete building with a rectangular footprint that is approximately 250m long by 37m wide by 22m high. Its walls are 1.2m thick. The building will be supplied with unconditioned ventilation air after deactivation. The objective of the work was to provide a cost effective engineering evaluation to determine if the un-conditioned ventilation air would result in condensate accumulating inside the building under study. The analysis described is a simple representation of a complex problem. The modeling method is discussed in sufficient detail to allow its application to the study of similar structures.