Raleigh, N.C.-based Progress Energy, which owns four nuclear powerplants in North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida, is shifting away from shipping spent fuel rods for centralized storage, to constructing dry storage facilities at individual plants.

Progress plans to start work by year's end on a $28-million project to construct and commission an above-ground, concrete-vault storage yard at the H.B. Robinson Nuclear Plant in Hartsville, S.C. according to company spokesman Rick Kimble.

A contract for containerizing and encasing some of the rods currently stored in pools at Robinson has been awarded to Transnuclear Inc., of Hawthorne, N.Y. Transnuclear will provide the dry storage system, transfer cask canisters, bunkers and any heavy haul systems required. The dollar value of the contract will depend on the number of canisters ultimately purchased. Requests for proposals to engineer and construct the 3-ft-thick concrete pad are expected to be issued soon.

Next on the list is the Brunswick Nuclear Plant in Southport, N.C., in 2007, perhaps to be followed by the Crystal River Nuclear Plant in Crystal River, Fla., if the federal Dept. of Energy's long-term storage facility at Yucca Mountain, Nev., is not ready to receive spent rods by 2014.

The dry storage system being designed is termed a "dual system" because the rods can be stored in the containers, but also shipped again without repackaging if the federal repository becomes available. Current shipments of spent rod for pool storage at the company's Shearon Harris Nuclear Plant near Raleigh, N.C., from the Brunswick and Robinson plants should end in 2005, Kimble said.