NICKEL PLATING OF SPENT FUEL ELEMENT TRANSPORTATION AND STORAGE CONTAINERS

For economic reasons, the stainless steel used for nuclear transport and storage containers has been replaced by a significantly less expensive, but almost equally suitable material - spheroidal graphite cast iron. Because of the impossibility of sufficiently decontaminating raw cast iron surfaces, a suitable coating had to be developed. Steel lining, epoxy painting and soft nickel plating are known possibilities. If both the requirements made on such a coating and the economics are considered, soft nickel seems to be the most attractive solution. The paper describes the process of soft nickel plating which was developed by Von Roll, Switzerland, based on its proprietary \"Toraxier-Process\" - in co-operation with GNS (Gesellschaft fiir NuklearService mbH, Essen). Soft nickel plating has been successfully applied to more than 30 Castor containers.