Dry cask storage

Each cylinder is surrounded by additional steel, concrete, or other material to provide radiation shielding to workers and members of the public.

Three companies – Holtec International, NAC International and Areva-Transnuclear NUHOMS – are marketing Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installations (ISFSI) based upon an unshielded multi-purpose canister which is transported and stored in on-site vertical or horizontal shielded storage modules constructed of steel and concrete.

As there was not a national nuclear storage facility in operation at the time, utilities began looking at options for storing spent fuel.

The NRC estimated that many of the nuclear power plants in the United States will be out of room in their spent fuel pools by 2015, most likely requiring the use of temporary storage of some kind.

However, on March 5, 2009, Energy Secretary Steven Chu reiterated in a Senate hearing that the Yucca Mountain site was no longer considered an option for storing reactor waste.

[9] The 2008, NRC guidelines call for fuels to have spent at least five years in a storage pool before being moved to dry casks.

[2][10] The NRC describes the dry casks used in the US as "designed to resist floods, tornadoes, projectiles, temperature extremes, and other unusual scenarios.

[18] The transport from Gundremmingen to the Ahaus site met with considerable public protest and the power plant operators and the government later agreed to locate such casks at the powerplants.

CONSTOR is a cask used for transport and long-term storage of spent fuel and high-level waste also manufactured by GNS.

[20] Spent fuel from the now-closed Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant was placed in CASTOR and CONSTOR storage casks during the 2000s.

[22] Another project is underway with Holtec International (of the USA) to build a dry spent fuel storage facility at the 1986 accident Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (RBMK-1000 reactors).