Over the past three decades, NPD has emerged a world leader in used fuel management with a worldwide footprint in dry storage and transport. A few metrics of NPD’s industry leadership are noted below:
- NPD is the only recognized global provider of used fuel storage and transport solutions to both western (PWR and BWR) and Russian origin (VVER and RBMK) reactors.
- NPD is world’s only provider of underground used fuel storage technology, considered by many industry experts to be the ultimate foil to acts of terrorism.
- With over 100 patents, NPD has led innovation in the nuclear power industry in virtually every aspect
- NPD serves 53 nuclear units in the U.S. (over half of the entire installed base) and 24 units abroad (see the map of Holtec dry storage sites nearby), providing dry storage and transport casks, canisters and associated ancillaries to meet their spent fuel management needs on ongoing basis.
- NPD is uniquely experienced in developing consolidated storage for used fuel having successfully supported the licensing of its HI-STORM technology for America’s first interim storage facility (Skull Valley, Utah, licensed in 2005). NPD is also the designated developer of a HI-STORM central storage facility in Chernobyl, Ukraine and, most recently, in southeastern New Mexico in the United States.
A typical used fuel dry storage project involves a large number of activities including safety evaluation, licensing, material acquisition, manufacturing process qualification, quality plan, project plan, procedure development, site construction, dry runs, fuel loading and facility commissioning. The Client may elect to perform one or more discrete activities that comprise a turnkey project with NPD carrying out the rest.
NPD’s project execution unit’s human resource base consists of a large cadre of project managers, adjunct project managers, construction engineers, and fuel loading services personnel.
Physical resources consist of a large number of fuel loading devices and ancillaries including capital equipment such as cask transporters, Forced Helium Dehydrators, Automatic Welding Machines, and Vacuum drying equipment.
A training center at HMD’s Pittsburgh plant dedicated to training loading crew and supervisors for pool-to-pad loading, operational since 2011, has been instrumental in enabling NPD to carry out simultaneous fuel loading operations at several sites around the world with superb safety and ALARA metrics.
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