Transactive-20 Container for Transporting Large Volumes of Intermediate Level Waste

Abstract

AEA Technology has commissioned the Transactive-20 container to transport large quantities of intermediate level waste (ILW). The container was designed and built by RWE NUKEM and has the appearance of a standard ISO freight container approximately 6m long × 2.4m wide × 2.6m high (20’ × 8’ × 8’ 6”). Inside it is a tubular stainless steel pressure vessel, 5.5m long × 1.9m diameter, that enables great flexibility in the payload type, for example: • up to thirty standard 227 litre (55 US gallon) drums of contact-handled ILW (CHILW); • up to five 500 litre drums of CHILW; • multiple packages of remote-handled ILW (RHILW). A variety of other desings of internal furniture can be developed to accommodate inner containers to meet specific customer requirements such as pallets of bulk items, glovebox waste or drums of radioactive liquid. The maximum gross payload is 6.5 tonnes, which is equivalent in practice to about 4 tonnes of CHILW. The maximum laden weight is 26 tonnes. The package is approved to IAEA Type B (U) F standards for transporting up to 3kg of fissile material. This paper describes the design and operation of Transactive-20 and our experience of transporting plutonium-contaminated material (PCM) between UKAEA’s Winfrith and Harwell sites. The loading system enables the container to remain on the transport vehicle during the whole of the load/transport/unload/transport cycle between the sites and therefore minimises turnaround time. For the operation described here, UKAEA lifts six standard 227litre drums into a circular aluminium container, known as a ‘carousel’, which is then closed and turned automatically through 90° for loading into Transactive’s inner vessel. Five such carousels are loaded in this way and locked firmly in place, before bolting on the lid and leak testing the vessel. A hydraulically-driven outer door is then closed and fastened to make the package ready for transport. Unloading is a straightforward reverse sequence of the loading operation. This paper describes in detail the design of the Transactive-20 and our operational experience with PCM and other fissile CHILW outlined above. It also outlines our plans to use the container for remote-handled ILW (RHILW). For example, a carousel has been constructed to move spent 60Co or 137Cs sources from medical, educational or industrial irradiators to a centralised long-term storage facility.