The development of the Holtec International storage, transport, and repository (HI-STAR) system

In late 1993, Holtec decided to evaluate seriously the development of a dry spent fuel storage product area to accomplish a quasi-horizontal integration of their wet storage product area with dry storage. This would then form a spent fuel storage technology business area. Such an approach would allow them to serve the continuum of utility customers for spent fuel storage and to include the DOE's OCRWM as a potential customer. The authors would no longer be selling wet storage vs. dry storage, but would offer integrated storage with the best economics and the greatest flexibility to address future contingencies. Following the issuance of the DOE Preliminary Draft Statement of Work and Design Specifications for multi-purpose canister (MPC) Systems on November 5, 1993, the authors set about applying several design concepts previously conceived to these draft specifications, as constrained by the capacity and cost criteria above. While the design went through several iterations, a brief summary of the endpoint designs is presented below and is followed by separate discussions of certain key design features and the development efforts to assure their successful incorporation