Year
2010
File Attachment
Abstract
Transnuclear, Inc. is a U.S. based company belonging to the Logistic Business Unit of AREVA is a well known leader in spent fuel transportation and storage cask design and manufacturing. Transnuclear, Inc. has designed and licensed numerous spent fuel storage and transportation cask models. However, as of today, commercial spent fuel assemblies are stored onsite due to the lack of either a central repository or reprocessing facility. Consequently, the market shipping needs are very specifics. They include research reactor fuel shipments, irradiated material shipments in connection with facility decommissioning, and irradiated fuel pins for post-irradiation examination. Those shipments require smaller transportation packages compared to those of commercial reactor. Additionally, interfacing with loading and unloading facilities designs, nuclear power plant fuel pools, shallow research reactor pools, hot cell facilities, etc. Limited crane capacity is also constraint. Majority of these types of transport packages have licenses from regulatory authorities outside of the USA which cannot be used for domestic shipments. Therefore, to address customer needs for domestic shipments, Transnuclear, Inc. has developed a 25 tons weight cask design. This design improves the capacity of the casks currently licensed while keeping the total weight of the package (including its impact limiters) low enough so that it can be used by most research facilities and hot cells. This new cask design is able to handle PWR, BWR, MOX, EPR, TRIGA and various research reactor fuel assembly designs as well as non fissile irradiated contents. This new cask features openings at the top and at the bottom, will be able lo be loaded and unloaded horizontally and vertically in a hot cell or in a fuel pool, and to be loaded and unloaded upside down depending upon the facility interface requirements. Transnuclear, Inc. has worked with the Logistic Business Unit of AREVA in France to ensure that this cask design is also compatible with European facilities. The safety analysis report is under preparation and will be submitted to the US NRC for their review and approval later in 2010 and this transport package is set to perform its first shipment in 2012.