Demonstration of the Quality Assurance System for Spent-Fuel Transports

Transport of radioactive material (RAM) is one of the areas of the nuclear fuel cycle that attracts environmental public concerns. NTL has been working in this field for more than 20 years, mainly as a contractor of COGEMA and BNFL. These companies have appointed NTL to organize and manage spent-fuel transports and to act as their representative during handling, loading, and dispatch operations. As yet no significant delays have been experienced during these operations. This is founded on one hand on the trustworthy collaboration between the power plant, the reprocessor, and NTL and on the other hand on the systematic and professional transport preparation based on our Quality Assurance (QA) system. Group procedures were written and instituted by NTL about 10 years ago. These have been developed to a reliable Group QA system approved by official accreditation bodies in Great Britain, France, and Germany. In the presentation we will expand on this QA system as well as on the measures necessary for the performance of spent-fuel transports using NTL-Hanau as a model case.