Fuel and waste will be transferred from the Yankee Rowe plant in Massachusetts to on-site storage facilities by NAC International, under a contract announced in December 2000.
Yankee Rowe, a 185MWe PWR, was permanently shut down in 1992 and the owner, Yankee Atomic Electric Company (YAEC) is now managing decommissioning of the plant.
Under the new contract, NAC will plan and execute transfer of all the spent fuel and ‘greater than Class C’ waste to an on-site independent spent fuel storage installation (ISFSI) comprising a series of NAC-MPC vertical canisters, operating and maintaining the installation during fuel transfer operations, and installing and testing each cask stored on the ISFSI pad. NAC is already supplying 15 NAC-MPC multi purpose canister systems to store 533 spent fuel assemblies, and one further canister for GTCC waste. The first of those canisters has already been fabricated and was installed on site in December 2000.
NAC International describes the project as being “pool to pad”, and the scope of work includes supply of ancillary systems, health physics, security services and site operations. In transferring the fuel, NAC will also perform fuel inspection and reconstitution activities and fuel storage rack removal. Bud Auvil, vice president of NAC’s Utility Services Group, said: “This is a first-of-a-kind contract for a spent fuel management company to perform the full scope of fuel loading and transfer operations and it represents a natural evolution of our core competencies”.
NAC says it will complete site transition and mobilisation by mid-February 2001, and it expects YAEC to complete final acceptance of the IFSFI in May 2002.
