Operation of the TO dry cask unloading facility

Spent fuel from nuclear power reactors may be managed in one of two ways: It may be reprocessed to recover and recycle fissile materials, and to vitrify the resulting high-level waste. Alternately, it may be permanently disposed of in a geologic repository. A third option might be added to these, although it is generally considered to be a temporary solution: spent fuel may be stored for an interim period following reactor discharge and prior to either reprocessing or disposal. Whether spent fuel is to be transferred to a reprocessing plant, to a geologic repository or to a monitored retrievable storage facility, one feature is shared by all of these management options: at each location there must be the capability of receiving and processing large quantities of spent fuel from the power industry safely and reliably. This paper describes an example of large-scale spent fuel receiving and unloading operations, which are performed at the commercial reprocessing plants at La Hague