FTI's Star^® System to Monitor Hanford Fuel Drying

FTI has provided its STAR^® system to Flour Daniel Hanford for use at the Hanford site in Washington state to monitor process conditions in the Hanford Cold Vacuum Drying Facility as spent weapons fuel is dried for permanent storage. FTI’s STAR system is designed for safety-related protection and control applications in nuclear power plants.

FTI has provided twelve panels, four of which contain STAR system components; the other eight contain related protection logic and control room components. “The STAR system was the first digital system to receive NRC approval for generic use for safety applications,” said FTI product engineer Jim Scecina.

The STAR system is the computer control of the Hanford Safety Class Instrumentation and Control (SCIC) system, which will provide active detection and response to process anomalies that if unmitigated could result in a safety class event. The entire SCIC system monitors process parameters, detects off-normal conditions and would provide safety actuations in the event of process anomalies.

The drying facility will receive Multi-Canister Overpacks (MCOs) loaded with spent nuclear fuel assemblies from the facility’s reactor basins, pump out most of the water, then remove the residual water in a drying process conducted by placing the MCOs under a vacuum at a controlled temperature less than 50 degrees centigrade. As a plutonium production complex, Hanford played a critical role in the nation’s defense for more than 50 years beginning in the 1940’s with the Manhattan Project. Hanford is now the world’s largest environmental cleanup project.

The STAR system is especially applicable for this use since it is approved by NRC and contains diverse processors that can perform complex safety functions. STAR has built-in test and calibration capabilities that allow rapid, error free surveillance checks.

For plant sites, STAR’s modular design allows incremental system upgrades.