Unloading of used nuclear fuel in the United States
As part of a contract to remove used fuel from a storage pool at a closed US reactor, our teams put their heads together to find a solution to remove a defective fuel assembly with a damaged safety handle. The problem of safely transferring the assembly had remained unresolved since 1976.
After an in-depth analysis, the Orano teams designed and certified a custom “defective fuel package” system, including a specially designed lifting device. Using these tools, the operations team successfully removed and placed the defective fuel assembly in dry storage.
Also, a new industrial record was achieved by offloading the pool 10 months faster than the previous industry benchmark.
