Monthly Archives: July 2014

Earlier this month, the Holtec dry cask loading crew at Southern Nuclear’s Joseph M. Farley Nuclear Plant placed the eighth and final cask of the 2014 campaign on the Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation (ISFSI) pad. This accomplishment set a Southern Nuclear Operating Company fleet record for the most casks loaded in a single Used Fuel Loading Outage (UFLO). What’s more, Farley achieved a record lowest dose-per-cask accumulation in the fleet and earned a position in the industry’s top quartile (see the table below). This was Farley’s seventh UFLO campaign. The initial UFLO campaign was in 2005 and currently there are 29 HI-STORM systems with 928 fuel assemblies safely stored on the Farley ISFSI pads. All of the dry storage equipment in use at Plant Farley is manufactured at Holtec Manufacturing Division (HMD) located in Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania. (more…)

A milestone has been reached for Holtec International’s Site Services group as they successfully completed the single largest delivery, preparation, and finishing of HI-STORM 100 systems to date. Holtec Site Services, in conjunction with Cook Nuclear Plant, overseen by Manager of Dry Cask Operations Paul Carteaux, successfully loaded, delivered, and assembled a record breaking twelve HI-STORM overpacks. (more…)

We are pleased to report that the NRC’s triennial inspection of the Company’s Quality Assurance Program at the Corporate Technology Center in Marlton, New Jersey, was concluded on June 27, 2014. During the exit interview, the NRC inspection team cited NO violations. The weeklong audit by four NRC inspectors evaluated the processes and implementation of various aspects of the Company’s QA Program including engineering design and analysis, configuration and process control, corrective action, audits, training and 10CFR72.48 implementation.  In the close-out meeting, the inspection team praised several elements of our quality program including the composition and comprehensiveness of the technical reports and the corrective action program as well as our document control system. (more…)

Protecting used fuel from damage during periods of operations involving high thermal or mechanical loadings is a key challenge in devising dry storage and transport systems.

Maintaining the fuel in an undamaged state is important to assuring that, in the future, it can be retrieved from storage, if need be, by normal means. As is well known to dry storage specialists, the greatest risk of damage to used fuel occurs during its transition from the wet to the dry state when it is often subjected to intense heat to extract its moisture. As reactor operators have, in recent years, gained improved power generating efficiencies by driving fuel to higher burnups – meaning that it is subject to the effects of bombardment by a greater number of neutrons – increased attention has been placed on the challenge of maintaining fuel integrity after it leaves the reactor. (more…)