FCC: a new fresh fuel assembly shipping container concept

For more than 25 years, Framatome, foremost world supplier of PWR fuel, has been delivering fuel elements directly or through Fragema, from the factories of its subsidiary FBFC to the various French and foreign sites. Since 1994, the French Safety Authority has undertaken a process of reviewing the concepts of the radioactive material shipping containers, with the purpose of ensuring that their safety files are consistent with the regulations in force. For now the safety analyses on the former RCC type packages have shown the limits of this design. Framatome has committed itself to this process by performing a global review of the RCC containers transporting uranium-bearing fresh fuel assemblies, which has led to upgrading of the design of these former containers to an up-to-date model: the FCC. The purpose of this paper is to present the design of the new FCC container from the mechanical strength and criticality standpoints, together with the regulatory tests which validated the basic hypotheses of the FCC design. (authors)