A FLEXIBLE CASK DESIGN FOR TRANSPORTING HIGH-LEVEL AND OTHER WASTE

In the 1980s, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) initiated a project to develop a safe and efficient transportation system for defense high-level waste (DHL W) having the flexibility to transport other types of waste. General Atomics (GA) is responsible for the cask design. safety analysis and Licensing and Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) provides technical oversight and test support. The cask design is complete, was successfully tested by SNL and the Safety Analysis Report completed. Recent effort has been focused on resolving the licensing issue of whether glassified waste qualifies to be shipped in a single containment cask and a number of limited shipment needs. These include transporting SRP waste for experimental and exammation program needs and HLW canisters presently being poured at the West Valley Demonstration Project (WVDP) in West Valley, New York. Presently, the NRC is considering a rule change to I 0 CFR Part 71.63b that would add glassified high-level waste as a waste form that is exempted from the separate inner container requirements when the authorized contents contains more than 0.74 TBq (20 ci) of Pu.