Joseph Oat Corporation Constructs the First Prototype Waste Package for Yucca Mountain
Joseph Oat Corporation has just finished fabrication of the first full-scale prototype 12-PWR UCF Waste Package for Bechtel-SAIC Corporation as part of the Department of Energy's Yucca Mountain Project. Joseph Oat used its expertise to develop unique fabrication, machining, and heat treatment solutions to meet the stringent technical specifications. The waste package consists of an Inner Vessel of 316-type stainless steel with a Fuel Basket assembly and removable lid closure and an Outer Corrosion Barrier of alloy N06022 nickel-chromium-molybdenum-iron alloy with closure lids. These are fabricated to meet the ASME Boiler & Pressure Vessel Code for Nuclear Power Components, Section III Class 2. The fit of all the parts is critical, so fabrication practices to minimize distortion were employed and all parts are fully machined and dimensionally inspected. The crucial part of the design and fabrication of the wastes package is the final metallurgical state of the Outer Corrosion Barrier, which must be in the annealed and quenched condition. For this, Joseph Oat successfully constructed a vertical furnace, lifting rig, and quench tank system that was capable of heating the Outer Corrosion Barrier to 2050°F and rapidly quenching it to under 700°F within 9 minutes while minimizing distortion. Subsequent to the heat treatment process, final internal machining was performed and the entire waste package was assembled and completed.
The Yucca Mountain Project is the national repository for spent nuclear fuel. The waste package is the final container for the fuel and has been designed for the extreme environmental, radiological, thermal, and mechanical loads that may be encountered in its long service life. The purpose of the prototyping process is to demonstrate the successful implementation of the design and to facilitate a refinement of the design for reliability in fabrication. This prototype waste package fabricated by Joseph Oat will be disassembled and given both destructive and non-destructive evaluations by Bechtel-SAIC, concentrating on the final metallurgical state of the Outer Corrosion Barrier. This will show that the conditions relied upon as the waste package design basis are achievable in practice.
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