Dry Storage of Irradiated Fuel at ENEA'S EUREX and ITREC Plants: Two Solutions

ENEA has in storage at its pilot reprocessing plants more than one hundred spent fuel elements arising from ENEL's (the Italian Electricity Board) power station of Trino Vercellese and from the Elk River reactor. This fuel has been in the pools of the EUREX and ITREC plants respectively since 1976 and 1968 and is now to be removed. Among the different solutions considered those envisaging the dry storage in casks at the plant sites will be described. Two different storage casks have been conceived, both deriving to a more or less large extent from Transnucleaire's TN 24 storage and transport cask. This choice was determined by the intention of giving the Italian industry the opportunity of manufacturing these casks, knowing that it would not be economical to develop them indipendently due to the small domestic market; moreover, the casks would not differ too much in technology from the AGN-1 transport cask, which has been built by Nuovo Pignone for ENEL and used to transport 400 or more fuel elements.