Holtec Highlights

We are pleased to announce that Mr. Douglas Weaver has joined Holtec International as the Vice President of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs. Mr. Weaver is a graduate of Princeton University where he received a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering and has over 25 years of nuclear power experience. Upon graduation, Mr. Weaver entered the United States Navy where he served as an instructor at the Nuclear Power Training Unit in Windsor, CT, and also as a division officer aboard the USS Louisville (SSN-724), where he qualified as Chief Engineer. After leaving active duty, Mr. Weaver joined the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission and has served in a variety of progressively more responsible positions in the field and at Headquarters. For the past three years, Mr. Weaver was Deputy Director of the Spent Fuel Storage and Transportation Division. Prior to that he served as the Deputy Chief of Staff for (former) USNRC Chairman Klein and directed the work planning and scheduling branch in the Office of New Reactors. Early in his NRC career, Mr. Weaver qualified as an inspector in Region I and then served for several years in the NRC’s Incident Response Center and as a Senior Emergency Response Coordinator. (more…)

Commencement of the movement of used fuel from the storage pool in Unit 3 to the storage pool in Unit 2 at Entergy’s Indian Point Energy Center (IPEC) this week marks the successful culmination of more than three years of work. Holtec International successfully labored at developing a safe set of equipment, processes, and procedures to enable the transfer of used fuel, fully submerged in water, from one fuel pool to another. Under the performance and team-oriented leadership of Joe DeFrancesco, Entergy’s Project Manager, the site will safely place used fuel from Unit 3 into dry storage without the need for extensive modifications to the Unit 3 fuel storage building. This “wet transfer” operation utilizes a Holtec designed Shielded Transfer Canister (STC) designed to hold up to 12 PWR assemblies, and an external shield cask (a HI-TRAC transfer cask). Wet transfer of fuel is admittedly a technically complex evolution because of the two-phase condition (water and steam) that may exist within the cask’s cavity. The benefits of wet transfer, however, are quite compelling. Most prominent is the fact that the fuel remains in its native aqueous environment throughout the transfer process. (more…)

We are pleased to report that the widely encountered problem of moving modern loaded casks across the nuclear plant’s “truck bay” (typically) designed for much lighter casks of 1970s vintage has been solved. The truck bay in a power plant is the main artery that links the plant to the outside world: It is the area through which all payloads used by the plant (component and machinery) must come and go. Unfortunately, truck bay slabs in a number of U.S. and overseas plants have local areas of structural deficiency that do not permit a modern full size cask, weighing as much as 200 tons, to be hauled across the bay in a conventional manner. This problem has forced some plants in the past to install support columns and girders to buttress the slab at a considerable expense. Others have resorted to temporary palliatives such as “load distribution systems” that must be assembled at each cask loading campaign and disassembled thereafter at considerable effort and cost. A cumbersome structure in the Truck Bay evidently is also an (undesirable) impediment to the movement of tools and equipment into and out of the plant. (more…)

We are pleased to announce Holtec International has signed a long-term contract with Union Electric Company (d/b/a Ameren Missouri) to deploy an Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation at the Callaway Energy Center. Under the Client Engaged Turnkey contract, Holtec will complete all facets of the engineering, site construction, security, fabrication, as well as pool-to-pad loading services to establish the dry spent fuel storage program at Callaway, located near Reform, Missouri. (more…)

Declaring that “the time has come to augment our executive team to better manage our rapidly expanding operations and to recognize the contributions of our most distinguished company stalwarts,” Dr. Kris Singh, Holtec’s President & CEO, presented certificates commemorating the elevation of Nicholas Abraczinskas, Pankaj Chaudhary, Joy Russell, and Mark Soler to the position of vice president. All four are Holtec veterans, having served in the position of “Director” (a mid-management corporate position) in different divisions at the Company’s New Jersey operations center. (more…)

We are pleased to announce the license application for securing the general certification of the HI-STORM UMAX, multi-purpose canister based storage system, was submitted to the USNRC last Friday, June 29, 2012. Engineered to store used fuel canisters in a below-grade configuration, HI-STORM UMAX is anatomically similar to the previously licensed HI-STORM 100U system, the development of which was prompted by the beyond-the-design-basis-threats in the wake of 9/11. HI-STORM UMAX is a larger version of HI-STORM 100U, with enhanced air circulation features and an increased cavity diameter to permit storage of any canister thus far in use at any site in the US. (more…)