ENSA ships its first ENUN 24P cask for China
10 March 2017 | Maliaño (Cantabria)
Equipos Nucleares S.A., S.M.E (ENSA) shipped the first cask of the ENUN 24P class which it sends to China. It is envisaged that it will arrive to Shanghai in mid-May, and to the Daya Bay nuclear power plant at the end of that month.
This is the first component for the Chinese market whose design, manufacture, and supply has been totally made by the Cantabrian company, since in its first foray in that market, 15 years ago, ENSA manufactured another two casks under another design.
The customer, the Uranium Resources Company (URC) asked to Equipos Nucleares for a cask for the transport of the fuel of two nuclear power plants, those of Daya Bay and LingAo, located on Southern China, in order to transport their spent fuel to other intermediate storage spent fuel pools which are located in the Lanzhou area.
The ENUN 24P is a dual-purpose cask, which has been designed for both the transport of spent fuel and for its storage, and it has capacity for transporting up to 24 non-damaged fuel items of the PWR class.
In order to meet the limitations existing on the transport route through China, ENSA has had to optimize the design of the cask with “female” pins instead of the habitual “male” ones, so that it could meet the requirement of a length of 3300 mm, and for fulfilling the requirements of the Chinese Regulatory Board, the maximum capacity of the cask has been limited to 24 fuel items.
On the other hand, ENSA has made a big effort in the development of the loading ancillary equipment, which are technically very advanced, with the goal of being able to handle the cask in a totally safe and easy way.
Once the cask is in China, the cold tests will be performed and the local personnel will be trained. This personnel had already received training in January and February 2016 from ENSA.
ENSA belongs to Grupo SEPI, a corporate holding which includes a total of 15 state-owned companies in which it has a direct, majority shareholding participation, with a final workforce of more than 73,000 professionals in 2015, and to which is attached the state-owned radio-and-television corporation, as well as one public foundation. Besides, it has direct minority shareholding participations in a further 9 companies, and indirect ones in more than 100 companies.