The four Type B casks owned and/or scheduled by EnergySolutions—currently the only casks used to transport Class B and C waste in the U.S.—will not experience any lapse in service after plans to fix a design flaw discovered this spring were approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission this week. EnergySolutions’s 10-106B casks were approved Monday to be retrofitted with thermal shields that adequately address a design flaw in a previously unanalyzed hypothetical crash scenario that caused EnergySolutions to stop all cask shipments in April. In May the NRC put those casks back in service in a restricted operating mode, but the interruption in service and confusion over scheduling impacted movement of waste across the country, particularly as Waste Control Specialists opened its doors in late April to accept Class B and C waste from generators across the country.
Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor Vol. 22 No. 09
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Morning Briefing
Article of 13
March 17, 2014
NRC CASK APPROVAL MEANS NO ADDITIONAL LAPSE IN WASTE SHIPMENTS
This week the NRC also approved EnergySolutions’ design for new 8-120B casks that will carry the same higher activity low-level radioactive waste. EnergySolutions has also been working to get four additional casks on-line for spring 2013. For its part, WCS has partnered with Robatel to purchase its own casks, and in June the company wrote to the NRC asking that the design review for those casks be expedited. The need for new Type B shipping casks for low-level radioactive waste is “urgent,” WCS told the NRC. Adding to the urgency is that fact that the April 27 opening date for the WCS disposal facility started the clock on a one-year period in which the site can accept 220,000 curies of waste from outside the compact states of Texas and Vermont, a significant increase from the 120,000 curie limit that will be in effect each following year.
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