Due to the ongoing need to store used nuclear fuel on site at nuclear plants in dry storage facilities for extended periods beyond the original licensing period, the importance of inspection and monitoring of dry cask storage systems (DCSS) has increased. The DCSS environment presents a nontrivial challenge for performing inspections due to elevated temperatures on the canister surfaces, potentially high radiation fluxes, and the confined spaces available for performing inspections. With the increasing need to perform inspections of DCSSs in the challenging environment in which the canister resides, a flexible and robust canister inspection solution must be developed that is also technically and economically feasible for performing inspections capable of detecting the degradation mechanisms of concern. This paper presents the ongoing efforts to prepare, demonstrate, and eventually qualify nondestructive evaluation techniques to industry codes and standards. These techniques ideally should be remotely deployed into the canister environment to provide inspection and monitoring options for canisters. These techniques are intended to detect the presence of stress corrosion cracking as well as the initiation of corrosion and other relevant forms of degradation.
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