BWR-SPENT FUEL TRANSPORT AND STORAGE WITH THE TN™9/4 & TN™24BH CASKS

The Swiss Nuclear Utilities have started in 2001 to store spent fuel in dry metallic dual-purpose casks in ZWILAG, the Swiss interim storage facility. BKW FMB Energy Ltd., as Mühleberg Nuclear Power Plant owner, is involved in this process and has selected to store its spent fuel, a new high capacity dual-purpose cask, the TN™24BH. For the transport in a medium size cask, COGEMA LOGISTICS has developed a new cask, the TN™9/4, to replace the NTL9 cask, which performed numerous transports of BWR spent fuel in the past decades. Licensed IAEA 1996, the TN™9/4 is a 40 ton transport cask, for 7 BWR high burn-up spent fuel assemblies. The spent fuel assemblies can be transferred in the ZWILAG hot cell in the TN™24BH cask. The first use of these casks took place in 2003. Ten TN™9/4 transports were performed, and one TN™24BH was loaded. After a brief presentation of the operational aspects, the paper will focus on the TN™24BH high capacity dual purpose cask, the TN™9/4 transport cask and describe in detail their characteristics and possibilities.