Recent advances in spent fuel consolidation concepts

In France, at the present time, most of the nuclear spent fuel is stored under water, first in the reactor pools, then in the interim storage pools at La Hague, prior to reprocessing. However, some fuel elements are presently stored in dry conditions: gas cooled/heavy water reactors; fuel elements at the CASCAD facility at Cadarache; breeder reactor fuel elements at Marcoule. Among the various technologies available to increase the storage capacity of the water pools, fuel consolidation appears to be one of the most promising. Different consolidation equipment have been developed in various countries. This paper presents two systems developed in France by SGN: the first one relates to a fixed facility with a large capacity dedicated to an interim storage, the second one a mobile compact unit which can be used in reactor pools. This system was developed with BABCOCK and WILCOX (Lynchburg, Virginia). (author). 2 figs