A nuclear flask is a shipping container that is used to transport active nuclear materials between nuclear power station and spent fuel reprocessing facilities.
Each shipping container is designed to maintain its integrity under normal transportation conditions and during hypothetical accident conditions. They must protect their contents against damage from the outside world, such as impact or fire. They must also contain their contents from leakage, both for physical leakage and for radiological shielding.
Spent nuclear fuel shipping casks are used to transport spent nuclear fuel used in nuclear power plants and research reactors to disposal sites such as the nuclear reprocessing center at COGEMA La Hague site.
Railway-carried flasks are used to transport spent fuel from nuclear power stations in the UK and the Sellafield spent nuclear fuel reprocessing facility. Each flask weighs more than , and transports usually not more than of spent nuclear fuel.
Over the past 35 years, British Nuclear Fuels plc (BNFL) and its subsidiary PNTL have conducted over 14,000 cask shipments of SNF worldwide, transporting more than 9,000 tonnes of SNF over 16 million miles via road, rail, and sea without a radiological release. BNFL designed, licensed, and currently own and operate a fleet of approximately 170 casks of the Excellox design. BNFL has maintained a fleet of transport casks to ship
SNF for the United Kingdom, continental Europe, and Japan for reprocessing.
In the UK a series of public demonstrations were conducted in which spent fuel flasks (loaded with steel bars) were subjected to simulated accident conditions. A randomly selected flask (never used for holding used fuel) from the production line was first dropped from a tower. The flask was dropped in such a way that the weakest part of it would hit the ground first. The lid of the flask was slightly damaged but very little material escaped from the flask. A little water escaped from the flask but it was thought that in a real accident that the escape of radioactivity associated with this water would not be a threat to humans or their environment.
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Seminar for PhD/master-students and postdocs on experimental nuclear materials research and simulation for present and future nuclear systems, with some emphasis on advanced manufacturing and analytic
The goal of the course is to provide the physics and technology basis for controlled fusion research, from the main elements of plasma physics to the reactor concepts.
Vivons-nous dans une "société du risque" ?
Pour répondre à cette question, nous reviendrons sur les différents processus sociaux (de l'essor des probabilités à celui du secteur de l'assurance, des pol
Sellafield, formerly known as Windscale, is a large multi-function nuclear site close to Seascale on the coast of Cumbria, England. As of August 2022, primary activities are nuclear waste processing and storage and nuclear decommissioning. Former activities included nuclear power generation from 1956 to 2003, and nuclear fuel reprocessing from 1952 to 2022. The licensed site covers an area of , and comprises more than 200 nuclear facilities and more than 1,000 buildings.
Spent fuel pools (SFP) are storage pools (or "ponds" in the United Kingdom) for spent fuel from nuclear reactors. They are typically 40 or more feet (12 m) deep, with the bottom 14 feet (4.3 m) equipped with storage racks designed to hold fuel assemblies removed from reactors. A reactor's local pool is specially designed for the reactor in which the fuel was used and is situated at the reactor site. Such pools are used for short-term cooling of the fuel rods.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is an independent agency of the United States government tasked with protecting public health and safety related to nuclear energy. Established by the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, the NRC began operations on January 19, 1975, as one of two successor agencies to the United States Atomic Energy Commission. Its functions include overseeing reactor safety and security, administering reactor licensing and renewal, licensing radioactive materials, radionuclide safety, and managing the storage, security, recycling, and disposal of spent fuel.
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