Feature ArticleThinking inside the boxProducing packages for radioactive materials takes time, attention to detail, and a thorough commitment to quality assurance.Radwaste SolutionsWaste ManagementMay 22, 2020, 3:42PM|Tim GregoireThe Optimus-H transport cask on display at the 2020 Waste Management Conference in Phoenix, Ariz.Jeff England, director of transportation projects for NAC International, pointed to the large stainless steel canister, which looked like a giant-sized silver dumbbell, perched on the flatbed of a semitrailer truck parked in the middle of the expansive exhibit hall in the Phoenix Convention Center. NAC, a provider of nuclear storage, transportation, and consulting services, was using the 2020 Waste Management Conference, held March 8–12 in Phoenix, Ariz., to unveil its newest transport casks, the Optimus-H and Optimus-L.“These are a different niche,” England said of the casks, which were designed to transport radioactive materials, including remote-handled transuranic waste, high-activity intermediate-level waste, low-enriched uranium, and fissile materials. “You have a lot of [small] drum-sized packages, and you also have a lot of big packages that will hold around 10 55-gallon drums. But there’s not anything in between. We hold a 110-gallon drum capacity.”Both the Optimus-H, which was on display at the Phoenix conference, and the smaller Optimus-L, are Type B(U)F transportation packaging, designed to meet the regulatory requirements of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission under Title 10, Part 71, of the Code of Federal Regulations. England said that the transport casks are intended to provide increased flexibility for smaller nuclear facilities, such as research reactors and laboratories, adding that NAC has already sold 23 Optimus casks to Canada, where they are licensed.According to Miles Smith, director of waste management at Whiteshell Laboratories, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories contracted NAC for the Optimus casks, which will be used for the removal of intermediate-level radioactive waste generated from the decommissioning of the nuclear research site in Pinawa, Manitoba.ManufacturingAs long as there are nuclear materials, there will be a need for containers to keep, store, transport, and dispose of them. While in the overall scheme of things, not much thought may be given to these containers, commonly referred to as “packages” by those who produce them, there is a long and intricate path to follow to design, certify, and build them.It typically begins with the primary customer, such as a government agency, utility, or contractor. The customer will then work with one of the larger waste management companies, such as Orano, Holtec International, or EnergySolutions, for the design and delivery of the packages. Those companies will, in turn, subcontract the manufacturing of the packages to a specialist manufacturer. NAC, for example, contracted the Camden, N.J.–based company Joseph Oat Corporation for the manufacture of the Optimus casks. Many of those manufacturing companies were on the floor of the Waste Management Conference exhibit hall.“We are by and large a build-to-print contract manufacturer,” said Joel Manship, vice president of business development for Major Tool and Machine (MTM), which had a booth at the Phoenix conference. Manship said that MTM is working on producing several package designs for use by the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration for transporting fissile material as the agency prepares to implement its plutonium pit production program at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Manship noted that designing, certifying, and building engineered containers for radioactive materials often takes a significant amount of time. “Some of the packages that we are working on began in the development phase five, seven years ago, and are just now going into a production phase,” he said.An NNSA team uses a 435-B Type B container to recover a cesium-137 self-shielded irradiator from a hospital in Houston. Photo: NNSAThe design and certification process accounts for much of that time. Obtaining an NRC license for a spent nuclear fuel cask, for example, can take as long as two years. Manufacturing unique and complex steel containers can also take a lengthy amount of time. Dan Payne, sales manager for Wagstaff Applied Technologies, recommended that customers should consider eight months as the shortest time it takes to complete the fabrication of a cask design.Payne said that Wagstaff built four Orano-designed 435-B transport packages for the NNSA’s Off-site Source Recovery Program (OSRP) at Los Alamos National Laboratory, one of which was donated to the International Atomic Energy Agency by the U.S. government. The OSRP works to remove excess, unwanted, or disused radioactive sealed sources that pose a potential risk to national security.A Wagstaff welder attaches components to the inner container of the Orano-designed 435-B package. Photo: Wagstaff ATSmall orders of a unique and complex nature, such as the 435-B transport casks, pose a number of manufacturing challenges, Payne said. In the case of the OSRP casks, this included the welding of thin pieces of steel in close tolerances, which necessitated welders to apply dry ice to portions of the steel as it was being welded to prevent the material from heat warping. “It was a very challenging fabrication in that sense,” he said. “We had to come up with some unique processes that are not typical industry practices.”Rob Despain, vice president of business development at Petersen Incorporated, of Ogden, Utah, also noted the significant amount of effort that goes into fabricating packages for high-activity nuclear materials. “They are very intricate and difficult to build,” Despain said of the spent nuclear fuel storage casks Petersen makes for a number of waste management companies. “They are a thick-walled, very high-end product, and that takes an extreme amount of fabrication and machining capabilities to pull off.”Manship said that to facilitate the manufacturing process, his company communicates with customers and package designers early in the process. “Even though we are not the design authority, we are engaged with [designers] to help make a producible package,” he said, adding that the goal is to increase the manufacturability of the package in order to reduce costs and turnaround times.A standard waste box produced by Petersen Inc.Likewise, Payne said that the designers can assist the manufacturing process by thinking about the specifications they include in their licensing documents, which, once defined, cannot be changed. He noted that different components, when welded together to form a larger structure, can change shape, to where the individual pieces no longer meet the required specifications. “Think about your dimensions as a designer in terms of what you need—what actually impacts the performance of the cask or container,” Payne said. “Don’t specify unneeded dimensions and don’t add incredible complexity where it’s unneeded.”Not all packages, however, are solid steel, heavily shielded canisters. PacTec is one company making certified flexible containers for packaging low-level and mixed radioactive waste. The company makes, among other things, flexible Type IP-1, IP-2, and 7A Type A IP-3 containers, as well as overpacks for shipping nuclear components.Pac-Tec LiftPacs are used to remove decommissioning debris from Canada’s Whiteshell Laboratories.While commonly used for packaging and disposing of large volumes of contaminated soil and debris from decontamination and decommissioning activities, these are not your everyday garbage bags. They are, said Bill Smart, PacTec’s nuclear sales director, highly engineered and tested products. “I’m not going to over-glamorize it . . . but what we do is important, and you’ve got to do it right,” he said. “It’s not just a bag.”Quality assuranceWhile a container design company such as NAC International is responsible for the licensing and certification of its casks, the fabricating company is responsible for following a certified quality assurance program. That program is the NQA-1 (Nuclear Quality Assurance-1) program, the industry consensus standard created and maintained by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. In other words, Despain said, the designer is responsible for conducting all the calculations to ensure that the cask specifications meet all required shielding and dose requirements. “But building to meet that criteria is 100 percent our responsibility,” he added.Having an NQA-1 program and keeping that program current is key to working with nuclear customers, Despain said. “Otherwise, they are not coming to talk,” he said, adding that NQA-1 tells the customer that the fabricator will do what it says it will do. “It is really a recipe for how you go through the entire build of that container.”The controlling document in the quality assurance process is the license, which contains all the design drawings and specifications. Because the design cannot be modified without redoing the license, Wagstaff’s Payne said, there is continuity along the entire supply chain, from customer, to designer, to manufacturer. It is the customer’s responsibility, however, as the end user, for showing compliance to the license, including overseeing the fabrication process, Payne explained.In the case of the transport casks Wagstaff produced for the OSRP, the NNSA contracted Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP), which manages the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, to oversee the production of the casks. An NWP inspector was in the Wagstaff shop for the entire contract production period of about two years, Payne said.Each time a contract is awarded for a container or cask, an audit of the manufacturer’s NQA-1 program is conducted by the customer. This can result in several audits of the same company for similar orders. Manship pointed out that if his company receives an order from a DOE laboratory, an audit of MTM’s program will be conducted by that lab. If another lab in the DOE complex places a similar order, however, that lab will also conduct its own audit. To remove this apparent redundancy and streamline the process, Manship said, MTM and other manufacturing companies have been pushing for the establishment of a governing body within the DOE to standardize the NQA-1 auditing process.Noting that customers such as the DOE and nuclear utilities are being held accountable to their stakeholders, Pac-Tec’s Smart said that his company welcomes whatever quality assurance requirements are asked of them. “We welcome it because it is important,” he said. “That’s not to say you want it to be inefficient and expensive, but you don’t want to cut corners.”WorkforceManufacturing issues and NQA-1 compliance are not the only challenges facing package makers. Like much of the rest of the nuclear industry, fabricators are facing an aging workforce and a dearth of skilled craftspeople to take their place. “Young people today are just not interested in becoming welders,” said Dwight Campbell, president of Container Products Corporation (CPC).Campbell said that his company is looking into building an internship program to attract new talent, but for now CPC’s main focus is working with local community colleges that offer welding programs. In addition to recruiting community college graduates, CPC donates much of its scrap metal to the colleges to provide students with material that they can use to practice different welding techniques. Campbell said that being based in Wilmington, N.C., many of the welding program students come from a military background.Payne, likewise, said that while his company generally has not had a problem finding talented engineers, the ability to recruit skilled craftspeople, including welders and machinists, is a major concern. While Wagstaff is currently well staffed with around 450 employees, Payne said that in the next 10 years, the company expects to lose about 45 percent of its staff based on anticipated retirements, not including natural attrition and loss. “That is huge,” he said. “Inside of 10 years we will essentially need to hire and train, without any expansion, 200 people.” In addition to being very active in working with community colleges and trade schools, Wagstaff has implemented an internship program to attract and train craftspeople, Payne said.MTM, which is based in Indianapolis, Ind., announced in October 2019 that it was working with Vincennes University to establish the second Indiana Federation for Advanced Manufacturing Education (INFAME) initiative in the state to prepare students for careers in advanced manufacturing. Through the initiative, students will be trained in automation, robotics, and other aspects of advanced manufacturing. The first class of INFAME students was expected to start this fall.Maintaining a workforce to meet demand is likely to continue to be a pressing issue, as many manufacturers are seeing a growing demand for radioactive waste packages as more nuclear power plants are moving into decommissioning and governments around the world step up the cleanup of their legacy waste sites. Given the ability to secure those skilled workers, however, the package industry is ready to meet those decommissioning and cleanup challenges. “Our basic philosophy is, if it fits, it ships, to steal a U.S. Post Office term,” NAC’s England said.Tags:low-enriched uraniummanufacturingnqa-1spent nuclear fuel casktransuranic wastewaste managementShare:LinkedInTwitterFacebook
Search for new Hanford tank waste contractor beginsWorkers retrieve waste from a single-shell tank at the Hanford Site earlier this year. Photo: DOEThe Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) has issued a draft request for proposals for the new Integrated Tank Disposition Contract at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash. The 10-year, $26.5 billion contract will replace the Tank Operations Contract currently held by Washington River Protection Solutions, and the scope will be expanded to include the operation of the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) after radiological, or “hot,” commissioning of the plant is completed.The DOE had awarded a tank closure contract to a team led by BWX Technologies in May of last year, but later rescinded that decision after protests were raised by the two losing contract bidders.About 56 million gallons of radioactive waste is contained in Hanford’s 177 aging underground tanks. The WTP, which is still under construction, will vitrify the waste after it has been separated into low- and high-activity waste streams.Go to Article
Hanford subcontractor to support transfer of radioactive capsules to dry storageA subcontractor has been selected to continue making modifications to a Hanford facility to transfer nearly 2,000 highly radioactive capsules to safer interim dry storage.Central Plateau Cleanup Company, the Department of Energy’s prime cleanup contractor for the Central Plateau area of the Hanford Site, near Richland, Wash., recently awarded a $9.5 million construction subcontract to Apollo Mechanical Contractors. Apollo will continue work on the site’s Waste Encapsulation and Storage Facility (WESF), where nearly 2,000 highly radioactive capsules containing cesium and strontium are stored underwater.Apollo will modify the WESF and install equipment needed to transfer the radioactive capsules from a water-filled basin to safer interim dry storage. In the 1970s, to reduce the temperature of the waste inside Hanford’s waste tanks, cesium and strontium were removed from the tanks and moved to the WESF. The DOE expects that the transfer of the capsules to dry storage will be completed by 2025.“While the 1,936 cesium and strontium capsules are currently in safe storage, WESF is an aging facility,” said Gary Pyles, project manager for the DOE’s Richland Operations Office. “Moving the capsules will enable the planned deactivation of WESF and will reduce the risk and significantly reduce the annual costs for storing the capsules.”Go to Article
Beyond Nuclear appeals NRC decision in Texas CISF licensing proceedingThe antinuclear organization Beyond Nuclear is appealing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s dismissal of its petition to intervene in the proceeding for Interim Storage Partners’ (ISP) application to build and operate a consolidated interim storage facility (CISF) for spent nuclear fuel in western Texas. Beyond Nuclear filed suit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on February 10, asking the court to order the dismissal of the license application.ISP, a joint venture of Waste Control Specialists (WCS) and Orano, submitted its application for the CISF with the NRC in June 2018. In September 2018, Beyond Nuclear filed a motion to dismiss the application. An NRC Atomic Safety and Licensing Board denied Beyond Nuclear’s request for a hearing in the licensing proceedings, and in December 2020, the NRC issued an order upholding that decision.Go to Article
Columbia University report sets out nuclear waste policy optionsA new report out of Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP) offers a number of recommendations for improving the management of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste in the United States.The report, Forging a Path Forward on U.S. Nuclear Waste Management: Options for Policy Makers, explains how the United States reached its current stalemate over nuclear waste disposal. It then examines productive approaches in other countries, and a few domestic ones, that could guide policymakers through options for improving the prospects for finding a disposal path for U.S. spent fuel and HLW.Part of the center’s wider work on nuclear energy, the report echoes previous recommendations for U.S. spent fuel and HLW management, such as the use of a consent-based siting process and the formation of an independent waste management organization, both of which were recommended in the Blue Ribbon Commission’s 2012 report to the Secretary of Energy and Stanford University’s 2018 report, Reset of U.S. Nuclear Waste Management Strategy and Policy.Go to Article
Savannah River’s Salt Waste Processing Facility begins full operationsAn aerial view of the Salt Waste Processing Facility at SRS. Photo: DOEThe hot commissioning testing phase of operations at the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) has been completed, signaling the facility’s entrance into fully integrated operations with the other liquid waste facilities at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina.Radiation shielding, environmental emissions, and product waste acceptance requirements were all tested and validated during the commissioning phase of the SWPF, the DOE announced on January 19. The SWPF will treat the approximately 31 million gallons of remaining salt waste currently stored in underground tanks at SRS.Parsons Corporation, the contractor that designed and built the first-of-a-kind facility, will operate the SWPF for one year, beginning this month. It is anticipated that the facility will process up to 6 million gallons of waste during the first year of operations.Go to Article
DOE looks to dispose of Savannah River process equipment as LLWThe Department of Energy is considering disposing of contaminated process equipment from its Savannah River Site (SRS) at a commercial low-level waste facility using its recent interpretation of the statutory term “high-level radioactive waste,” which classifies waste generated from the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel based on its radiological content rather than its origin.Go to Article
Texas congressman weighs in on Yucca MountainBurgessThe U.S. Congress has failed to uphold its promise to fully fund Yucca Mountain, in Nevada, as a permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel, Rep. Michael C. Burgess (R., Texas) writes in an op-ed article published on December 8 in the Dallas Morning News.More than three decades after passing the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, Congress has yet to fully fund the Yucca Mountain Project. Burgess points out that while some countries have found success with reprocessing spent fuels, the fission process will always produce some amount of material that must be safely disposed, making it necessary to find a permanent solution.Go to Article
Finland’s Onkalo repository a “game changer,” says IAEA’s GrossiOnkalo, Finland’s deep geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel, has been characterized as a game changer for the long-term sustainability of nuclear energy by Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency.“Finland has had the determination to move forward with the project and to bring it to fruition,” Grossi said during a November 26 visit to Olkiluoto, Finland, where the repository is under construction. “Waste management has always been at the center of many debates about nuclear energy and the sustainability of nuclear activity around the world. Everybody knew of the idea of a geological repository for high-level radioactive nuclear waste, but Finland did it.”Posiva Oy, the Finnish company tasked with researching and creating a method for the permanent disposal of spent fuel from Finland’s Olkiluoto and Loviisa nuclear power plants, obtained a license to construct the Onkalo repository in 2015, marking the first time that a construction license for a geological disposal facility was issued anywhere in the world. The site near the Olkiluoto plant was chosen following several years of screening a number of potential sites.Go to Article
New Mexico denies authorization extension for WIPP utility shaftConstruction of a new utility shaft at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant transuranic waste repository may be put on hold after the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) denied a request by the Department of Energy and its contractor to extend state authorization of the project. The shaft is part of WIPP’s Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System, a $300-million project intended to allow simultaneous mining and waste emplacement activities in the geologic repository by increasing ventilation to the underground.The NMED in April 2020 approved a request by the DOE and WIPP operator Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP) for temporary authorization to begin construction of the utility shaft while the state reviews a modification to WIPP’s permit allowing the addition to the repository. That authorization expired on October 24, and the DOE and NWP asked for an extension of the authorization for an additional 180 days while the permit modification process continues.Go to Article
NUREG published on high-burnup spent fuel storage and transportationA final report on the dry storage and transportation of high-burnup spent nuclear fuel (NUREG-2224) has been issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. NUREG-2224 provides a technical basis in support of the NRC’s guidance on adequate fuel conditions as it pertains to hydride reorientation in the cladding of high-burnup spent fuel (over 45 gigawatt-day per metric ton uranium).NUREG-2224, “Dry Storage and Transportation of High Burnup Spent Nuclear Fuel,” was made publicly available on November 23 on the NRC’s ADAMS website with Accession No. ML20191A321.Go to Article