Shippingport Spent Fuel Canister System Description

In 1978 and 1979, a total of 72 blanket fuel assemblies (BFAs), irradiated during the operating cycles of the Shippingport Atomic Power Station's Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) Core 2 from April 1965 to February 1974, were transferred to the Hanford Site and stored in underwater storage racks in Cell 2R at the 221-T Canyon (T-Plant). The initial objective was to recover the produced plutonium in the BFAs, but this never occurred and the fuel assemblies have remained within the water storage pool to the present time. The Shippingport Spent Fuel Canister (SSFC) is a confinement system that provides safe transport functions (in conjunction with the TN-WHC cask) and storage for the BFAs at the Canister Storage Building (CSB). The current plan is for these BFAs to be retrieved from wet storage and loaded into SSFCs for dry storage. The sealed SSFCs containing BFAs will be vacuum dried, internally backfilled with helium, and leak tested to provide suitable confinement for the BFAs during transport and storage. Following completion of the drying and inerting process, the SSFCs are to be delivered to the CSB for closure welding and long-term interim storage. The CSB will provide safe handling and dry storage for the SSFCs containing the BFAs. The purpose of this document is to describe the SSFC system and interface equipment, including the technical basis for the system, design descriptions, and operations requirements. It is intended that this document will be periodically updated as more equipment design and performance specification information becomes available