Corrosion assessment for spent nuclear fuel disposal in crystalline rock, using variant cases of hydrogeological modeling

Abstract

This paper presents a corrosion assessment of copper spent nuclear fuel disposal canisters in crystalline rock, using hydrogeological modeling. A simplified approach is considered, to avoid complex and time-consuming computer simulations. This simplified case is presented as a base case, with changes in the hydrogeological parameters presented as variant cases. The results show that in Taiwan’s base case, decreasing the hydraulic conductivity of the rock or decreasing the hydraulic conductivity of dikes results in a shorter transport path for sulfide and an increase in corrosion depth. However, the estimated canister failure time is still over one million years in the variant cases.