Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology

This paper describes the development of a dry operation process for PWR spent nuclear fuel, which is currently stored in the domestic NPP';s storage pool, using a dual purpose metal cask. Domestic NNPs have had experience with wet type transportation of PWR spent nuclear fuel between neighboring NPPs since the early 1990s, but no experience with dry type operation. For this reason, we developed a specific operation process and also confirmed the safety of the major cask components and its spent nuclear fuel during the dual purpose metal cask operation process. We also describe the short term operation process that was established to be completed within 21 hours and propose the allowable working time for each step (15 hours for wet process, 3 hours for drain process and 3 hours for vacuum drying process).

Keywords

Dual purpose metal cask, Dry storage, Operation process, Vacuum drying, He backfilling