Impact of more conservative cask designs on the CRWMS Transportation System

The Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management has been working since the mid-1980s to develop a cask fleet, which will include legal weight truck and rail/barge casks, for the transport of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) from reactors to Civilian Radioactive Waste Management System SNF receiving sites. The cask designs resulting from this effort have been identified as Initiative I casks. In order to maximize payloads, advanced technologies have been incorporated in the Initiative I cask designs, and some design margins have been reduced. Due to the wide range of the characteristics (age/burnup) of the spent fuel assemblies to be transported in the Initiative I casks, it has become apparent that a significant portion of the shipments of the Initiative I casks could not be loaded to their design capacity. Application of a more conventional cask design philosophy might result in new generation casks that would be easier to license, have more operational flexibility as to the range of age/burnup fuel that could be transported at full load, and be easier to fabricate. In general, these casks would have a lower capacity than the currently proposed Initiative I casks, thereby increasing the transportation impacts and the transportation costs