GA-4/9 Legal Weight Truck Casks

The GA-4 and GA-9 spent nuclear fuel shipping packages are the most advanced legal weight truck (LWT) casks for the shipment of commercial spent nuclear fuel and high level radioactive waste.  Tailored to hold four PWR and nine BWR spent fuel assemblies respectively, this GA family of casks offers four times the capacity of other LWT casks, as well as the capability to ship other high level radioactive waste forms. 

Designed primarily of high strength stainless steel, the GA-4/9 family of casks provides unique features focused on achieving high capacities:

• A containment boundary contoured around the shape of the payload 
• A depleted uranium (DU) gamma shield for enhanced security, also contoured to fit the cavity shape
• Aluminum honeycomb impact limiters for weight efficiency
• A loaded cask weight which permits travel on any  highway without overweight shipping permits

The benefits of higher capacity casks within the legal weight truck limits include: 

• Avoiding overweight shipping permits and logistics
• Minimizing the number of shipments
• Significant program cost savings over traditional LWT shipping

Through extensive design, analysis and testing, GA has demonstrated the GA-4/9 cask family’s ability to efficiently meet DOE’s transportation needs for the repository.  Successful regulatory tests on a ½-scale GA-4 cask have been conducted and in 1998 the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued a license for the GA-4 cask (Certificate of Compliance No. 9226)