Abstract
Current practice for commercial spent nuclear fuel management in the United States of America (US) includes storage of spent fuel in both pools and dry storage cask systems at nuclear power plants. Most storage pools are filled to their operational capacity, and management of the approximately 2,200 metric tons of spent fuel newly discharged each year requires transferring older and cooler fuel from pools into dry storage. In the absence of a repository that can accept spent fuel for permanent disposal, projections indicate that the US will have approximately 134,000 metric tons of spent fuel in dry storage by mid-century when the last plants in the current reactor fleet are decommissioned. Current designs for storage systems rely on large dual-purpose (storage and transportation) canisters that are not optimized for disposal. Various options exist in the US for improving integration of management practices across the entire back end of the nuclear fuel cycle.
Highlights
Spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive wastes have been generated in the United States of America (US) since the early 1940s
Every nation that has pursued nuclear power has subsequently come to the same conclusion: deep geologic disposal is the preferred option for isolating spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste [2,3,4]
Current practice in the US for dry storage of spent fuel in dual-purpose canisters (DPCs) at existing reactor sites represents an unstated commitment to the future implementation of some combination of three options: x Repackaging spent nuclear fuel in the future before disposal x Constructing one or more repositories that can accommodate DPCs x Storing spent fuel at surface facilities indefinitely, repackaging as needed
Summary
Spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive wastes have been generated in the United States of America (US) since the early 1940s. The NWPA established a federal responsibility for permanent disposal of all spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste, and required the Department of Energy (DOE) to evaluate multiple repository sites and to license and construct a disposal facility that would begin operations in 1998.
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