The Development of a Type B(U) Transport Container Design in Cast and Forged Stainless Steel for the Transport of Immobilised Intermediate Level Waste

United Kingdom Nirex Limited (Nirex) is responsible for providing the United Kingdom with safe, environmentally sound and publicly acceptable options for the long-term management of radioactive materials. This includes intermediate level (ILW) and some low level (LLW) wastes. As part of its role Nirex has defined standards and specifications for the conditioning and packaging of these wastes, and carries out assessments of packaging proposals to ensure compatibility with the requirements for future phases of waste management. In order to facilitate this process and to provide a basis for the production of waste package specifications, Nirex has developed the Phased Disposal Concept, and produced a suite of underpinning safety and performance assessments. It has also undertaken work to assess the compatibility of its waste packaging specifications with other waste management options. The Phased Disposal Concept continues to be developed and updated to incorporate issues arising from dialogue with stakeholders, including members of the public; future changes arising from Government policy, legislation and regulations; information from waste producers, and the results from on-going research and development. One of the documents describing the Phased Disposal Concept is the Generic Transport System Design (GTSD) [1]. The GTSD outlines the range of waste packages to be transported and disposed of, and describes the design of the transport system needed to transport wastes from their sites of production or storage to a centralised phased disposal facility site. It also describes a range of re-usable transport containers which could be used to transport those waste packages, which require Type B standards [2] for transport, through the public domain. This paper describes the development to date of such a design of reusable transport container, known as the SWTC-285, the Standard Waste Transport Container (SWTC) with 285 mm of shielding.