TRANSPORTATION OF SOLID IRRADIATED AND CONTAMINATED NON-FUEL RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL IN LARGE TRANSPORTATION PACKAGE - Presentation

Currently in the United States of America non-fuel bearing solid irradiated material generated during the operation of nuclear power plants is transported offsite in smaller transportation packages depending on the availability of the disposal sites. In the meantime, these materials are stored at the reactor sites generally in spent fuel pools posing challenges for spent fuel pool space and capacity management at some of the utilities. Examples of irradiated and contaminated hardware include: Control Rod Blades, Local Power Range Monitors, Fuel Channels and Poison Curtains for BWRs and Burnable Poison Rods Assemblies for PWRs. Decommissioned plants also have a need to dispose of segmented reactor vessel and internals. There is a need for disposal of these materials using a suitable larger transportation package. Transnuclear Inc. belonging to Logistics Business Unit of AREVA has designed a Radioactive Waste Container (RWC) that can be used to package these materials on site. The RWC can then be transported offsite in the MP197HB Transportation Package as a payload to a disposal facility. Some spent fuel pools are limited in available space for storage of RWC. In such cases, RWC is designed to be transferred from the spent fuel pool to a temporary onsite storage facility. The unique designs of RWC and MP197HB Transportation Packages allow onsite storage of a partial or a fully loaded RWC at the plant site either in a spent fuel pool or in a temporary onsite over pack before transportation. The design features of the RWC allow for repeated intermittent loadings of these materials for better packaging efficiency, higher packaging density for radiation dose, cost and space savings to the user. This paper examines some of the unique design features of RWC and MP197HB Transportation Package that allow user to realize the benefits of using larger package for transportation and disposal.