Lessons learned preparing wet fuels for dry storage at INTEC

Since 1997 a variety of reactor fuels have been removed from storage pools, conditioned in a fuel canning station (FCS), and stored in the dry shielded Irradiated Fuel Storage Facility (IFSF) at the Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center (INTEC). Problems developed operating the FCS to safely and efficiently dry fuel, to monitor and control important parameters such as fuel temperature, to measure and document the extent of dryness, and to avoid pyrophoricity with some fuels in dry storage. The ways these problems were resolved during startup and hot operation of the FCS are described herein