Callaway fuel store nears completion

Major civil construction work has been completed for an underground dry used fuel storage facility at Ameren's Callaway nuclear power plant in Missouri. The first canisters containing used fuel are scheduled to be put in place in July, Holtec International said.

Major civil construction work has been completed for an underground dry used fuel storage facility at Ameren's Callaway nuclear power plant in Missouri. The first canisters containing used fuel are scheduled to be put in place in July, Holtec International said.

The completed pad of the fuel storage facility at Callaway (Image: Holtec)

Holtec announced yesterday that the storage facility's pad is now complete, the curbing and apron have been finished and six lids are ready for installation. The heavy haul path from Callaway's fuel building to the storage facility's pad is also complete.

All 48 cavity enclosure containers (CECs) had been put in place at the bottom of a 7.6-meter deep excavation by November 2014, Holtec said. Since then, over 7645 cubic meters of concrete have been poured to fill the space surrounding the CECs for the entire 5.2 meter height of them. The pad was poured in three segments, it said, with completion on 22 January.

Dry runs of pool-to-pad activities are scheduled over the next couple of months, with the loading of the first six multi-purpose canisters scheduled for July.

The storage facility at Callaway - based on Holtec's HI-STORM UMAX technology - can accommodate a total of 48 CECs, each with a capacity to store 37 used fuel assemblies, providing storage of a total of 1776 used fuel assemblies.

Holtec signed a long-term contract with Ameren Missouri in September 2012 for the construction of Callaway used fuel store. Under that contract, Holtec is responsible for engineering, site construction, security, fabrication, as well as pool-to-pad loading services.

Callaway - a single 1284 MWe pressurized water reactor - has been in operation since 1984. In March, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission extended the plant's operating licence for an additional 20 years, to 2044.

The US government is legally responsible for developing a long-term disposal strategy for used nuclear fuel. From 1992 until 2009, that strategy had been the Yucca Mountain repository. The DOE announced a new waste disposal strategy in early 2013, envisaging a series of interim stores until a permanent underground disposal facility is ready for service around 2048. Last week, Holtec and Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance announced plans for a consolidated interim used nuclear fuel storage facility - also using HI-STORM UMAX technology - in south-eastern New Mexico.

Researched and written
by World Nuclear News