DECISION PROCESS INVOLVED IN PREPARING THE SHIPPINGPORT REACTOR PRESSURE VESSEL FOR TRANSPORT

The most significant part of the Shippingport Station Decommissioning Project was the one-piece removal and shipment of the reactor pressure vessel (RPV). Implicit in the RPV transport was the task of qualifying the RPV as a waste package acceptable for shipment. Soon after physical decommissioning began on September, 1985, questions regarding the packaging certification and transport of the RPV from Shippingport, Pennsylvania to the U. S. Department of Energy (DOE) Hanford waste burial site necessitated reexamination of several planning assumptions. A complete reassessment of the regulatory requirements governing the RPV shipment resulted in a programmatic decision to obtain a Type B(U) Certificate of Compliance and abandon the originally planned U. S. Department of Transportation (DOT) low specific activity (LSA) shipment. The decision process resulting in this conclusion was extensive and involved many organizations and agencies. Incidental to this process, several subtle certification issues were identified that required resolution. Some of these issues involved the definition of LSA material for large packages; interpretation and compliance with DOE, DOT and U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRG) regulations for the transport of radioactive material; incorporation of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) regulations by the Panama Canal ; and DOE policy requiring advance notification to States of radioactive waste shipments.