CONSTOR® TRANSPORT AND STORAGE CASK FOR SPENT FUEL AND FOR HIGH ACTIVE WASTE

The CONSTOR® is a steel-concrete-steel sandwich cask design. It was developed with special consideration to an economical and effective way of manufacturing by using conventional mechanical engineering technologies and common materials. The main objective of this development was to fabricate these casks in countries not having highly specialised industries for casting or forging of thick-walled metal casks. Nevertheless, the CONSTOR® concept fulfils both the internationally valid IAEA criteria for transportation and the requirements for long-term intermediate storage. The basic cask concept has been designed for adaptation to different spent fuel specifications as well as handling conditions in the NPPs. Adaptations have been made for spent fuel from RBMK and VVER reactors, and also for BWR spent fuel and high active waste. So far, almost 40 CONSTOR® RBMK-1500 casks have been manufactured and delivered to Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant (INPP) in Lithuania. Two of these have been successfully loaded during hot trial tests and placed in storage. Basing on this positive experience , the Lithuanian competent authority has granted the INPPstorage license, including the use of CONSTOR® RBMK-1500 casks in June 2001. The transport license in Czech Republic (Type B(U)F-85) for CONSTOR® RBMK-1500 has been issued also in June 2001. Furthermore the CONSTOR® has obtained the type B(U)F verification certificate from the Russian authority GAN.