Orano TN, the subsidiary of France based Orano providing used fuel management and transportation services, announced on 2 August that it had been selected by US Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Company to design, build and implement dry fuel storage at the Wolf Creek nuclear plant in Kansas.
Along with developing the site’s first Interim Spent Fuel Storage Installation (ISFSI), Orano will conduct pool-to-pad services to transfer the used nuclear fuel from the reactor’s storage pool to the new onsite NUHOMS dry storage systems. The installation and initial transfer is expected to be completed by 2021.
The installation combines two technologies developed by Orano TN -NUHOMS MATRIX horizontal storage modules and NUHOMS Extended Optimized Storage (EOS) canisters. The storage modules are a two-tiered cavity module design that reduces by up to 45% the amount of storage pad needed for the same amount of stored used nuclear fuel canisters. The high-capacity dry shielded canisters can store up to 37 used fuel assembles each.
Orano TN’s NUHOMS systems have stored used nuclear fuel in the USA for more than two decades, with installations at 33 sites representing more than 45,000 stored used fuel assemblies. Wolf Creek is a single unit 1200MWe pressurised water reactor, which began operating in 1985. It is currently licensed to operate until 11 March 2045.
