Experience in complying with quality assurance requirements for cask lifting devices

The Nuclear Assurance Corporation (NAC) owns and operates four NAC-1 truck casks. These casks are used to ship spent reactor fuel assemblies and radioactive reactor-core components. The casks have been loaded or unloaded at a total of fifteen nuclear facilities in the United States. In addition, NAC has used another large, overweight-truck cask to ship radioactive reactor core components from a reactor to a waste burial site. There are many individual differences in the cask handling facilities at each of the reactor stations, nuclear research facilities and the storage and burial sites serviced. Various types of auxiliary lifting and handling devices for on-site cask operations have been required. The quality assurance requirements for the equipment used in interfacing casks with nuclear power plant facilities have become more stringent. This paper presents details on the type of special equipment being employed, the quality assurance requirements that are imposed, and the quality assurance audits that are being performed. The paper presents NAC's experiences in the development and procurement of a variety of cask-facility equipment and the implementation of quality assurance procedures for the design, manufacture, acceptance and in-service inspection and test of the equipment. Also, experiences in working with customers' engineering and quality assurance organizations are discussed with specific attention given to the establishment of interface equipment requirements and the documentation that must be developed. The paper discusses a number of factors that must be considered in the development of design criteria for cask lifting devices. In addition to the criteria that are important to the functional safety of the equipment, other considerations important to the equipment utilization and effectiveness are presented