Development of a dual purpose spent fuel storage cask

Metal storage casks offer utilities a self-contained dry storage mode for spent fuel as well as the option to ship off-site without additional handling of fuel assemblies - a feature not afforded by other storage methods. In addition, such a dual-purpose cask has the potential to offer significant system cost savings to the national effort particularly if the MRS (monitored retrievable storage) interim facility is utilized in the national program. The Westinghouse MC-10 cask was designed for dry storage of irradiated PWR fuel assemblies at a reactor site independent spent fuel storage installation (ISFSI). The Mc-10 Topical Safety Analysis Report has been approved for reference by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for design compliance with the site specific requirements of 10 CFR, Part 72. The analytical methods describing passive heat removal and shielding behavior were verified by comparison between predictions and experimental results from a prototype cask built by Westinghouse and tested at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory. A view of the cask loading operation in a hot cell is shown