The Development of Transport Container Designs for Immobilised Intermediate Level Waste

This paper describes the work undertaken by UK Nirex Limited to develop a range of containers for transporting immobilised intermediate level waste (ILW) from the site of arising to a repository for disposal. In the UK, ILW is defined as waste having greater than 4 GBq/tonne alpha activity or 12 GBq/tonne beta/gamma activity but excluding the high level waste which arises from the reprocessing of irradiated fuel, generates heat and will be vitrified. The latter is to be stored for at least 50 years to allow the heat emanating from it to diminish before disposal.