Russia has taken another step towards strengthening its position in working with nuclear energy. A domestic transport container for transporting spent nuclear facilities has passed the necessary tests and certification.
The authors of the project note that this product is unique, developed for the first time in this modification and produced in a single copy. It was developed by order of the A. P. Alexandrov Research Technological Institute and designed by the Central Design and Technological Institute (AO "CPTI", part of the TVEL Fuel Company of Rosatom).
The length of the transport kit in assembled form is more than 10 m, width - 4.5 m, height - about 7 m. The total weight of the product without contents is more than 100 tons, and with a packaged steam generating unit - more than 290 tons.
The peculiarity of this project was that the inner surface of the container for the SGU had to be filled with lead. It was necessary to achieve uniformity of the lead layer, the absence of voids. But lead shrinks in volume when cooled, which is why we had to go through several cycles of melting and topping up. This was the most difficult task, but our specialists solved it by developing their own filling technology, which undoubtedly brought unique experience to the institute.
For Russia, this is the first domestic project of this kind in the field of decommissioning nuclear and radiation-hazardous facilities and handling radioactive waste.