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Management of Commercially Generated Radioactive Waste - U.S. ...

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Reprocessing<br />

Plant<br />

6.86<br />

Shielded Cell<br />

Port Facility Shipping Transport Ship<br />

Cask<br />

Canister in<br />

ST r a n s p o r t<br />

' -<br />

T a s o<br />

r o Transport<br />

SVehicle<br />

IDril Holed<br />

. Canister<br />

Cask Drilling<br />

Ice Sheet<br />

FIGURE 6.1.16. Schematic <strong>of</strong> Operations in Ice Sheet Disposal Systems<br />

for High-Level <strong>Radioactive</strong> <strong>Waste</strong>s(18)<br />

Predisposal Treatment and Packaging. The predisposal treatment <strong>of</strong> waste for the ice<br />

sheet concept would be identical in many respects to the predisposal treatment <strong>of</strong> waste for<br />

the mined geologic repository concept. Chapter 4 discusses the predisposal systems for both<br />

spent fuel and HLW common to all the various alternative concepts for waste disposal.<br />

Transportation and Handling. Transportation to the disposal site would probably be ac-<br />

complished in three steps, as indicated above. First, all the waste canisters would be<br />

loaded into heavily shielded transport casks for shipment from the-interim storage site to<br />

the embarkation port. <strong>Waste</strong> containers would accumulate at the embarkation port in the U.S.<br />

on a year-round schedule. There, the canisters would be unloaded in a shielded cell facility<br />

and examined for leakage, contamination, damage, or other unsuitable conditions. The canis-<br />

ters would be overpacked, transferred individually to specially designed casks, and loaded<br />

aboard a specially designed transport ship for shipment to the ice sheet. Acceptable canis-<br />

ters could also be stored for up to a year in an interim retrievable surface storage facil-<br />

ity (Szulinski 1973). Any unacceptable canister would either be corrected on site or re-<br />

turned to the reprocessing plant or another appropriate handling facility.<br />

Landing and discharge operations at the ice sheet would require special facilities and<br />

would be limited to the summer months. At the debarkation port, the casks would be in-<br />

spected and unloaded onto over-ice transport vehicles. After transport to the disposal site,<br />

the canisters would be lowered from the casks to the emplacement site and the casks would be<br />

recycled back to the embarkation port. An alternative transportation mode would be to fly<br />

the waste canisters from the debarkation site to the emplacement site.

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