Spent nuclear fuel from the two reactors at Exelon’s La Salle County generating station in the US is to be moved from indoor cooling pools to outdoor ‘dry casks’ no later than 2010, according to reports.
The dry casks, already in use at other reactors, appear as small concrete silos lined up on a two-foot thick concrete pad. Within each 180-tonne cask’s reinforced concrete exterior, is an inner steel shell that will contain 68 old but still radioactive fuel assemblies.
The casks are approved by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
As is the case among many industry processes, waste products and by-products are a common occurrence, with this termed as ’spent nuclear fuel’ in the nuclear power process. Spent fuel is nuclear fuel that has been irradiated in a reactor to the point where it is no longer useful in sustaining a nuclear reaction.
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