DEVELOPMENT OF A NEW DUAL-PURPOSE CASK

TN International (AREVA Group) has proposed for more than 20 years the TN®24 cask family which features by forged steel casks used both for the transport and storage of used fuel. Thus more than 20 versions of TN®24 casks have been designed for more than 20 customers in Europe, in the United States of America and in Japan which have ordered more than 300 casks. The PWR or BWR fuel characteristics may have various enrichment value up to 5%, various cooling time down to 2 years and various burnup up to 60 000 MWd/tU. Facing the current international trend towards expanding used fuel interim dry storage capabilities with higher performances especially in term of used fuel characteristics and long term storage, TN International decided to launch an extensive innovation process to create the new generation of transport and storage casks. The TN®DUO solution is the result of an extensive process to develop innovative and cost effective dual-purpose cask. The purpose of this paper is to present this experience, and furthermore to underline the main advantages of the TN®DUO dual-purpose transport cask.