Work on the Cook Nuclear Power Plant’s new dry cask storage facility will begin this summer, increasingly required as the plant’s spent fuel pools become limited in storage capacity.
With the current spent fuel pool expected to be full by 2013, the new helium-consuming dry cask storage (DCS) facility is needed sooner rather than later and will help house fuel assemblies.
For many years nuclear power plants have temporarily stored spent fuel in special water pools at the reactor site, but with commercial reprocessing never fully developed in the US and a permanent waste repository not yet developed either, these pools are nearing capacity and cask storage takes on greater importance – as does helium as a result.
What is dry cask storage?
Providing above ground and long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel, DCS is quite a simple and yet extremely safe and reliable system of sealing used fuel in large airtight steel and concrete canisters.
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