Based on the safety analysis, the risk of high temperature and radiation are found in the local operation during the automatic welding and vacuum drying of typical spent fuel dry storage system. To enhance the operational safety, a high temperature and radiation protection equipment has been developed through the structural design and numerical analysis and has been applied in demonstration project in China. It is proved by the local monitoring data that in the case of loading spent fuels with a total heat rate of 26kW, with the help of the protection equipment, the highest temperature of the operational area is 60% lower than the case without the equipment in the same environmental conditions. The dose rate in the area can also be 60% lower. The equipment is proved to be of significant help to ensure the safety of operators in high temperature and radiation environments, during both normal operation and equipment failure conditions.

To solve the problem of low thermal safety margin, bad heat conductivity and lack of experiment data for performance against accumulative radiation in current concrete developed for spent fuel dry storage all over the world, a specific high performance concrete material with three mixed components and high tension steel fibre has be proposed and developed. It is proved by the experiment data that 1) the concrete material can withstand 180 °C for long term, 300 °C for 168 hours and 800 °C (as an accidental case) for 20 minutes, after which there is no observable cracks and flakes; 2) the heat conductivity of the material can be enhanced 27%, with the help of steel fibre inserted, which can significantly enhance the heat load of spent fuel assemblies to be loaded in dry storage container; 3) the material can withstand a total neutron dose of 1 × 1017n/cm2 and gamma dose of 2.4 × 107Gy, which is expected during 60 years of spent fuel storage. The performance of the material is better than that of current concrete material used for spent fuel dry storage all over the world. The material enhances the thermal safety, structural safety and radiation protection safety during spent fuel dry storage, which can be applied at the same time in other technical area with high temperature and high radiation conditions.