For more than 30 years, Connecticut Yankee stored its used nuclear fuel assemblies in the reactor’s spent fuel pool located on the plant site. The fuel will be stored at the site until the Department of Energy (DOE) meets its legal obligation to remove it.

After an extensive analyses and comparison of fuel pool and dry cask storage options, CY chose the dry cask option for storing its 1019 spent fuel assemblies.

The fuel storage facility site, selected from eight carefully researched areas, is located on CY's property about three-quarters of a mile from the former reactor site. The secluded location of the dry fuel Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation (ISFSI) is tucked in a slight valley between natural ridgelines and is out of sight of nearby rivers. The NAC-MPC fuel storage and transport canister system chosen by CY is licensed by the NRC for both storage and transportation.

Construction of the reinforced concrete storage pad and vertical concrete and steel storage casks that hold the fuel was completed in 2002. Transferring the fuel from the wet spent fuel pool to dry storage/transportation canisters began in the first quarter of 2004 and was completed March 30, 2005 (shown above).

There are 43 dry storage casks on the 100 by 200-foot, three-foot-thick concrete pad. Forty of the caks conatin spent fuel assemblies and three store sections of the reactor vessel internals that is classified as high level radioactive waste (Greater Than Class-C waste) Each concrete cask has a three and a half-inch steel liner surrounded by 21 inches of reinforced concrete. Each storage cask, when loaded with the storage/transportation canister, weighs 126 tons. The entire dry storage process -- procuring materials, fabricating the fuel containers, constructing the storage facility, and transferring the fuel -- took approximately three years to complete.