Radioactive hardware waste packaging and transportation experience

Spent fuel pools at many nuclear power plants are congested with discharged fuel because no fuel reprocessing or other spent fuel storage facilities are available. Spent fuel pools must also accommodate various other hardware components that have become highly radioactive. In a typical boiling water reactor (BWR) plant, the radioactive hardware stored in spent fuel pools includes discharged control rods, local power range monitors, poison curtains, and flow channels. Most of the radioactive hardware is low-level waste and can be disposed of at shallow land burial, low-level waste disposal sites. A packaging and transportation system for the removal of radioactive hardware from spent fuel pools has been developed using the model FSV-1 cask. A unique characteristic of this cask is its 16 ft (48.8 m) long internal cavity, which can accommodate long radioactive hardware, such as BWR control rods, without having to perform in-pool cutting operations. A complete system for handling the cask and preparing BWR control rods and other irradiated hardware for shipping has been successfully operated at several nuclear power plants. The experience gained is resulting in broadened applications and capabilities available to the utilities for radioactive waste management