WEST VALLEY, N.Y. – EM’s West Valley Demonstration Project (WVDP) is about 70 percent complete toward relocating all high-level waste canisters from a building to be demolished.

   The site’s High-Level Waste Relocation Project has safety relocated 195 of the 278 canisters and is on track to move the rest of them to an interim dry storage facility before the end of 2016, nearly one year ahead of schedule.

   The canisters must be moved from a former chemical processing cell in the Main Plant Process Building before WVDP and contractor CH2M HILL BWXT West Valley can demolish that building and the Vitrification Facility.

   The relocation project, which began in November 2015, marked the first time vitrified high-level waste was relocated for onsite interim storage in the U.S.

   The canisters are loaded into vertical storage casks. Nearly 40 casks, each weighing about 88 tons, have been moved about a half mile away to the onsite interim storage pad for eventual disposal offsite. 

   NAC International, a U.S. supplier of dry storage technology and services to the nuclear industry, constructed all 56 casks for the project. With a design life of at least 50 years, each cask was built onsite, constructed of 20-inch-thick reinforced concrete and containing 4-inch-thick stainless steel liners. Their design is based on spent nuclear fuel dry cask storage systems used throughout the world, with modifications for long-term storage of vitrified high-level waste.

   The company previously developed 10 major Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)-licensed systems and the first storage and transport canister-based system fully approved by the NRC. 

   The NAC team, including subcontractors NAES Constructors and local craft, Petersen Industries and Lift-Systems, partnered to provide WVDP’s solutions for interim storage and future shipment of the high-level waste for disposal. 

   Watch this video of workers constructing the casks and learn more about the project.