Basic Design and Safety Evaluation of Metal Cask Storage Facility With New Transportation System

Transportation system utilizing fluid film technology is widely used in various industries. In the U.S. nuclear industry, it is used for transporting concrete casks. Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) is planning to adopt this design concept to transporting metal cask inside a spent fuel interim storage facility (SFISF). We call this the Metal Cask Transportation System (MCTS). By adopting this system, we can lower the ceiling height of the building, and thus reduce the amount of building materials. The MCTS has not been licensed in Japanese nuclear facility, so that we carried out operational and seismic tests with 1/3-scale model system to verify applicability of this system. As the conclusions, the MCTS has sufficient stability to maintain the safety functions of metal cask. Furthermore, we designed a SFISF introducing the MCTS and confirmed that heat from casks is removed appropriately by natural convection and the dose to the general public is enough low against the statutory dose limit.