HOW TO TRANSPORT A CASK WHICH HAS BEEN LOADED AND THEN STORED FOR SEVERAL DECADES -Presentation

One option for the storage of spent fuel which is not reprocessed immediately is the use of dual purpose casks suitable for transport and storage. Similarly, high level waste or residues can also be stored in dual purpose casks before an appropriate repository has been commissioned. Some authorities license the storage facility with the conditions that the package design is approved according to the IAEA Regulations for the Safe Transport of Radioactive Material (TS-R-1). Whilst the storage facility needs to be licensed for a middle term (potentially several decades), package design approvals for transport are issued with a limited period of validity (typically 3 to 5 years). One issue is then the maintenance of the package design approval for transport. What happens if after a certain period of time the approval cannot be renewed / prolonged (or reissued if there was no need for a transport approval during the storage period), either because of a revision in the Transport Regulations or because of a new safety review? Is it possible to synchronize the expiration dates of the transport approval (short term) and of the storage facility license (middle term)? Several options have been considered by the Waste and Spent Fuel Transport Industry Working Group within the World Nuclear Transport Institute (WNTI). These options are: - To issue package design approvals for transport with a longer validity for dual purpose casks than for “standard” package designs, and to synchronize the expiration of the transport approval with the validity of the storage facility license; - To stabilize the Transport Regulations for the dual purpose packages; - To revise the Transport Regulations in order to allow dual purpose casks prepared for transport not later than a given date under a certain edition of the Regulations to continue in transport, whatever is the later edition of the Regulations; - To separate the storage license and the package design approval for transport, and at least to avoid requiring maintenance of the transport approval along the life of the storage facility, and then to license the final transport through a new package design approval or through the special arrangement procedure. The paper discusses these options in detail.