AIKEN, S.C. - EM recently improved the efficiency of a facility used to receive, unload and transfer spent nuclear fuel casks for processing at the Savannah River Site.
The employee-driven improvements came after concerns from the site's management and operations contractor, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS), that projected receipt and shipping schedules for the casks containing research reactor fuel from around the world could lead to a backlog of the containers at the site’s L Area Disassembly Basin Transfer Bay. That could slow delivery of the casks, increasing costs.
“Spent nuclear fuel shipping schedules are dynamic and shipments aren’t spread evenly throughout the year," SRNS L Area Deputy Facility Manager Geoff Hendrick said. “Shippers don’t typically transport casks in the winter, which means an influx of shipments in the warmer months."
EM and SRNS modified preventive maintenance schedules on transfer bay equipment to perform maintenance on multiple items concurrently; eliminated redundant and needless procedural steps; and procured better absorbent material to more easily dry casks removed from the basin prior to shipment.
The solutions resulted from an analysis SRNS conducted involving a variety of the site’s subject-matter experts.
“We found that, in addition to being able to maximize transfer bay availability and the number of casks we can safely process, the analysis identified numerous areas where we could make our challenging work easier for our employees in the field," said Hendrick, who led the analysis. “We made sure that personnel at all levels of our team were involved with this process from the beginning. We have the operator and radiological protection inspector in the field in mind as we work to complete our identified improvements."
Workers at the transfer bay load the fuel into casks and send them to the site’s H Canyon for dissolution and downblending. The fuel is stored safely underwater in the Disassembly Basin until needed.
“We needed to find a way to ensure we would always be ready to meet our cask handling demands. Our goal is to always be able to ship fuel to H Canyon to support their dissolution schedule whenever they request a loaded cask, while at the same time to be able to unload and return empty casks to the shipper as safely and efficiently as possible, said Hendrick. “There are a limited number of these spent fuel casks in use worldwide. We want to minimize the time casks sit in L Area waiting to be unloaded and returned."
Source: U.S. Dept. of Energy, Office of Environmental Management
