News & Views, Volume 46 | Evaluation of Reconfiguration and Damage of BWR Spent Fuel During Storage and Transportation Accidents
By: Bill Lyon
Structural Integrity Associates is participating in a Department of Energy (DOE) Integrated Research Projects (IRP) program focused on storage and transportation of used nuclear fuel (UNF). The project, entitled Cask Mis-Loads Evaluation Techniques, was awarded to a university-based research team in 2016 under the DOE Nuclear Fuels Storage and Transportation (NFST) project. The team is led by the University of Houston (U of H) and includes representatives from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Southern California, the University of Minnesota, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and staff members from the Nuclear Fuel Technology and Critical Structures and Facilities divisions of SI. The primary objectives of NFST are to 1) implement interim storage, 2) improve integration of storage into an overall waste management system, and 3) prepare for large-scale transportation of UNF and high-level waste. The goal of the cask mis-load project is to develop a probabilistically informed methodology, utilizing innovative non-destructive evaluation (NDE) techniques, determining the extent of potential damage or degradation of internal components of UNF canisters/casks during normal conditions of transport (NCT) and hypothetical accident conditions (HAC).
