Germany’s Gesellschaft für Nuklear-Service (GNS) said on 30 September that, with the contract that has been concluded for the last three quivers for PreussenElektra's Isar nuclear plant, which is to be shut down by the end of 2022, all 65 quivers, required for the nuclear plants of the four major German energy providers, have now been commissioned.
With its packaging system consisting of CASTOR ® containers and fuel rod quivers, GNS offers packaging of all irradiated fuel elements and rods at German nuclear plants. These containers and quivers enable the immediate dismantling required by law.
GNS's CASTOR ® containers have been used in all German power plants for the disposal of irradiated fuel elements for more than two decades. More than 1200 of these transport and storage containers are now loaded in Germany and stored in interim storage facilities.
For the safe packaging of defective fuel rods, GNS, together with its subsidiary Höfer & Bechtel, has developed a system that allows them to be packed in hermetically sealed quivers and stored directly in the usual CASTOR ® fuel element containers.
With the help of the GNS fuel rod quiver, the pressurised water reactor systems in Biblis and Unterweser and the boiling water reactor system in Krümmel have already seen all fuel removed. A total of 24 quivers were processed there by the GNS teams and stored in CASTOR ® containers in the on-site interim storage facilities.
Lothar Mertens, division manager responsible for the nuclear fuel cycle at PreussenElektra: “Unit 2 of our Isar nuclear power plant is one of the last three plants in Germany that will run until the end of 2022."
"With the help of the GNS containers and quivers, which have already proven themselves in other power plants, we can remove the fuel rods collected from the two power plant blocks Isar 1 and Isar 2 from the pools in the shortest possible time."
Photo: GNS has delivered the last three quivers for Germany's Isar nuclear power plant (Photo: PreussenElektra)
