National Academies Press: OpenBook
« Previous: 1 Introduction, 13
Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×

2
Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points

This chapter describes sources, inventories, and end points for spent nuclear fuel in Russia and the United States.

2.1 SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL IN THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

According to the Russian Federation law “On the Use of Atomic Energy,” irradiated nuclear fuel is considered a valuable raw material for recovery of nuclear fuel components and certain isotopes. At the same time, irradiated nuclear fuel is a potentially hazardous product as well as a potential source of plutonium, which is a proliferation risk.

At the end of 2001 there were 13,515 metric tons of heavy metal (MTHM) of irradiated nuclear fuel at the Russian nuclear power plant and radiochemical plant storage facilities (Shatalov 2002) (see Tables 2.1 and 2.2). The annual growth of the SNF inventory in Russia is about 850 MTHM, nearly all from nuclear power operations in Russia, Ukraine, and Bulgaria. The total radioactivity of spent nuclear fuel accumulated in Russia comprises about 4.65×109 curies (Ci).

2.1.1 Power-Reactor Spent Fuel in the Russian Federation

Of the four types of power reactors that operate in Russia, two types generate most of the power: boiling water graphite reactors (the RBMK reactors), and pressurized water reactors (the VVER reactors). RBMK-1000 reactors use UO2 fuel pellets containing 2.0–2.4 percent U-235 (the fissile isotope of natural uranium). The pellets are sealed in zirconium alloy rods, which are bundled into assemblies of 18 rods. Each assembly is inserted into a pressure tube or coolant channel. Water flow through a

Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×

coolant channel can be stopped during reactor operation, allowing for online refueling. RBMK fuel enriched to 2 percent typically reaches an average burnup of about 30,000 megawatt days per metric ton of heavy metal (MWd/MTHM).1

The VVER reactors operate with UO2 fuel enriched to 3.0– 4.4 percent,2 sealed in zirconium alloy rods. The VVER rods are roughly half the length of RBMK assemblies. The rods are removed during refueling outages, one to two years apart (depending on fuel enrichment). VVER fuel typically reaches an average burnup of approximately 50,000 MWd/MTHM in a VVER-440 and 40,000–45,000 MWd/MTHM in a VVER-1000. The other two types of reactors are the liquid metal fast reactors (BN series), only one of which, the BN-600, now operates as a commercial power reactor, (the BOR-60 operates as a pilot power station), and the Bilibino boiling water graphite reactors (EGP-6 reactors), which are small versions of the RBMK reactors. The BN-600 at the Beloyarsk nuclear power station is cooled with sodium and has steelclad UO2 fuel, enriched to 17–33 percent.

Six VVER-440 reactors (pressurized water reactors) operate in Russia and generate 87 MTHM of SNF annually. After discharge from the reactors, the SNF is stored in cooling pools for a period of 3–5 years, and then it is shipped in casks to the reprocessing plant, RT-1, at PA “Mayak.” The cooling pools at the reactor sites are typically filled only to 20–25 percent of their capacity. If shipments of the SNF offsite were to halt, however, the pools would be filled in four to five years. Breached SNF assemblies (now numbering 60) from VVER-440 reactors are stored in separate sections of the cooling pools. These assemblies are expected to be shipped to the RT-1 plant for reprocessing by 2007.

Another 21 VVER-440 reactors operate in European countries outside of Russia. Shipments of VVER-440 SNF from these countries to Russia have diminished in recent years. As noted earlier, Russia intends to take back the SNF from those reactors, and is currently storing and reprocessing SNF from at least some of them for a fee. Seven VVER-1000 reactors operate in Russia and generate 190 MTHM of SNF annually. Another 17 VVER-1000

1  

The theoretical maximum burnup for fuel of this composition—that is, the energy released if every nucleus of uranium were fissioned—is approximately 940,000 MWd/MTHM.

2  

Enrichment is 3.6 percent on average for VVER-440s and either 3.3 or 4.4 percent for VVER-1000, depending upon the length of the operating cycle (Rosenergoatom 2002).

Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×

TABLE 2.1 Data on SNF Inventory in Russia

Nuclear Power Plants and Other Nuclear Facilities

SNF Inventory at the End of 2001, MTHM

Reactor Type

Number of Operating Reactors

Leningrad

3,720

RBMK-1000

4

Smolensk

1,830

RBMK-1000

3

Kursk

3,230

RBMK-1000

4

Total RBMK

8,780

 

11

Balakovsk

344

VVER-1000

4

Kalininsk

172

VVER-1000

2

Novovoronezh

163

VVER-1000

1

Rostova

 

VVER-1000

1

Total VVER-1000

679

 

8

Novovoronezh

71

VVER-440

2

Kolsk

112

VVER-440

4

Total VVER-440

183

 

6

Bilibinsk

123

EGP-6

4

Beloyarsk

59

BN-600

1

 

190

AMB

 

Total Nuclear Power Plants

10,020

 

30

PA “Mayak”

486

NA

 

Krasnoyarsk MCC

2,840

NA

NIIAR

122

NA

Kurchatov Research Center

3

NA

IPPE

14

NA

NIKIET

1

NA

Tomsk SCC

32

NA

Total for Russian Federation

13,520

 

aRostov is a new power plant and no SNF had been discharged as of the end of 2001.

SOURCE: Shatalov (2002).

Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×

TABLE 2.2 Aggregated Data for the End of 2001 on Amounts of Spent Nuclear Fuel and Radioactive Waste at Nuclear-Powered Submarines (NPSs) Destined for Dismantling, Floating Technical Bases, Shore Bases, and Plants Carrying Out Dismantling Work

Object name

Units

NPS Compartments

Quantity of Solid RW

Quantity of Liquid RW

Total Activity

 

Number

Number

Ci

m3

Ci

m3

Ci

Ci

NPSs with unloaded SNF

29

 

 

18,000

3.0×106

1,200

12

3.0×106

NPSs awaiting unloading of SNF

93

170

1.8×108

54,000

1.7×107

3,600

36

2.0×108

Floating technical bases

41

20

2.0×107

 

 

3,600

30

2.0×107

Shore bases of northern Region

2

116

5.0×107

4,600

6.0×103

3,200

60

5.0×107

Shore bases of Pacific Region

2

40

2.0×107

15,550

1.6×105

2,100

40

2.0×107

Plants that dismantle NPSs

8

 

 

2,000

3.0×102

2,500

30

3.3×102

 

SOURCE: Shatalov (2002).

Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×

annually. Another 17 VVER-1000 reactors operate outside of Russia, and several others are in the design and construction stage. Spent fuel from VVER-1000 reactors is not currently reprocessed: After 3–5 years of storage in cooling pools at the power plants, the assemblies are shipped to a centralized storage facility at the Krasnoyarsk MCC.

Eleven RBMK-1000 reactors operating in Russia generate 550 MTHM of SNF (about 5,000 fuel assemblies) annually. Two AMB reactors (earlier versions of the RBMK reactor), located at the Beloyarsk nuclear power plant, were decommissioned in 1983 and 1990 (IAEA 2001).

Four EGP-6 reactors (graphite-moderated boiling-water reactors for combined heat and power, each generating 62 MWth) located at one power station in Bilibino are planned to be finally decommissioned in 2004.

Unit 3 of the Beloyarsk nuclear power station is a BN-600 reactor. The BN-600 has operated since 1980, producing roughly 3.8 MTHM of SNF per year (CEG 2000), and is licensed to operate through 2010. The SNF from this reactor is reprocessed at RT-1.

2.1.2 Government-Managed Spent Nuclear Fuel in the Russian Federation

Management of SNF from weapons production, naval vessels, and research reactors is paid for by the federal government.

Weapons-Production Spent Nuclear Fuel

Three dual-purpose reactors (production of plutonium and power) still operate in the Russian Federation: one at the Krasnoyarsk MCC and two (ADE-4 and ADE-5) at the SCC. These reactors continue to operate because the nearby cities need the heat and electricity that the reactors produce. The fuel from these reactors does not accumulate because it is reprocessed at onsite facilities. Roughly 1.5 MTHM of plutonium are generated by these reactors (500 kg each) annually and placed in storage as an oxide (Diakov 1995). Reprocessing of this SNF generates liquid and solid radioactive wastes.

Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Maritime Spent Nuclear Fuel

As noted earlier, the Soviet Navy launched some 248 nuclear-powered ships, including 244 submarines, most powered by two reactors.3 The other vessels were cruisers and research and support vessels. As of July 2002, 190 Russian submarines have been retired from service. The majority of these, 114, are from the Northern Fleet and sit in various conditions at the bases along the shore of the Kola Peninsula. The remainder, 76, are from the Pacific Fleet at bases along the coast of Vladivostok (54 in Primorsky region) and on the Kamchatka Peninsula (22 in Kamchatka).

By early 2001, about 70 tons of SNF (including breached assemblies) had accumulated from the transport nuclear installations at the Russian Navy’s shore bases and floating technical bases (a refueling and service ship). The total radioactivity of that accumulated SNF is estimated to be 200 million curies. The status of many assemblies is unknown. As part of decommissioning of nuclear submarines, the unloaded reactor compartments (along with adjacent compartments that add buoyancy) are cut from the rest of the vessel, and are left floating, moored in place, for storage. Beginning in 2002, the rate at which SNF is unloaded from operating and decommissioned transport installations is expected to be in the range 15–18 NPSs per year.

The SNF from nuclear-powered ships in Russia is generally described as reprocessible or unreprocessible. The latter category includes defect fuel, damaged fuel,4 fuel encased in solidified metal coolant, and fuel for which existing reprocessing facilities do not have appropriate process lines due to the fuel’s composition (e.g., U-Zr and U-Be fuel). Reprocessing of defect fuel requires new technological solutions (control systems, packaging in tight containers, development of the method for reprocessing in containers). Reprocessing of defect fuel is to be taken into account when the RT-1 undergoes plant reconstruction (planned for 2005–2007). According to the Russian strategy for SNF management (CEG 2000), damaged cores will stay at the na-

3  

Forty-six Soviet submarines, including mini-submarines, were built with only one reactor each. Seven of these were built with liquid-metal-cooled reactors (LMRs), rather than the standard pressurized-water reactors (PWRs), using leadbismuth eutectic (a prototype LMR submarine had two reactors) (Nilsen et al. 1996).

4  

Defect fuel includes assemblies with structural damage (swelling, bending, leakage, etc.). Damaged fuel is fuel that was damaged as a result of an accident and now is not retrievable from the cores.

Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×

val bases until the cores can be safely disposed.5 Reprocessible fuels are planned to be transported to PA “Mayak” for radiochemical reprocessing. The defect fuel is also planned to be reprocessed after storage. Plans are not yet in place for unreprocessible fuel.

Northern Fleet6

As noted previously, 114 nuclear-powered submarines (NPS) had been decommissioned from the Russian Navy in northwestern Russia, as of July 2002. Seventeen NPSs will be defuelled in 2002. Defueling of NPSs currently designated for decommissioning is anticipated to be completed by 2007.

Two stand-prototypes (on-land test reactors) of the shipbased nuclear power plants are in operation in Russia, in Obninsk. The SNF from these stand-prototypes, totaling several tons, is stored in cooling ponds at the sites. Three stand-prototypes of space nuclear power installations were also constructed and operated in Russia. The SNF from these reactors (about 500 kg) is stored in dry storage facilities at the sites.

Research and Test Reactor Spent Nuclear Fuel

According to the IAEA research reactor data base (1999b), there are 51 research reactors in the Russian Federation: 28 operating, 12 decommissioned, and 11 shut down. At least one of the reactors reported as operating has since shut down (Bellona 2002). In addition, there are 46 critical assemblies: 29 operating and 17 shut down. Kozlov et al. (2002) report an inventory of roughly 28,500 spent fuel assemblies at 24 of the research reactors. Fourteen research reactors outside of Russia expect to send their SNF to Russia for disposition.

Because of the diversity in the construction of the fuel rods and fuel assemblies and differences in fuel composition and structural materials, a decision will be made for each research re-

5  

An alternative for management of damaged cores is placing cut-off reactor compartments in inactive, large-diameter strategic missile compartments. The method proposed would, it is hoped, safely isolate damaged reactor compartments from the biosphere for at least 25 years. (Ruzankin and Makeyenko 2000).

6  

Limited time and resources prevented the committee from addressing the situation in the Pacific Fleet in any detail.

Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×

actor and assembly (critical and subcritical) selecting between reprocessing, long-term storage, and disposal for the SNF.

2.2 SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL IN THE UNITED STATES

As of December 31, 2001, the United States was storing approximately 45,000 MTHM (Holt 2002)7 of spent fuel from its civilian nuclear power plants at reactor sites and at centralized facilities8 (see Table 2.3) for eventual disposal in a geologic repository, and is producing new commercial SNF at a rate of about 2,000 MTHM per year. A smaller amount of spent fuel from the weapons program is also being stored for eventual disposal, but most has been chemically processed to recover plutonium, highly enriched uranium (HEU), or Np-237. The United States does not now reprocess its spent fuel from civilian nuclear power plants, so the current form of the SNF is the form that is to be disposed of in an underground geologic repository.

2.2.1 Power-Reactor Spent Nuclear Fuel in the United States

Production of nuclear power for civilian use and production of plutonium for nuclear weapons have mostly been separate in the United States.9 Spent nuclear fuel from commercial power reactors (commercial SNF) constitutes the largest source and stockpile of SNF in the United States. This is due to the scale of the U.S. nuclear power enterprise (103 reactors generating 87.8 GWe

7  

DOE last updated its comprehensive inventory in 1999 (EIA 1999a), so information on the current inventory is scarce. The 1999 inventory provides the data for Table 2.3.

8  

Two centralized storage facilities—one in West Valley, New York, and another in Morris, Illinois—currently have SNF. Another has been proposed, called Private Fuel Storage (PFS), in Skull Valley, Utah. At West Valley, the fuel has been loaded into dual-purpose casks (storage and transportation) and awaits shipment to INEEL for interim storage.

9  

The most notable exception is the N-Reactor at Hanford, which produced more weapons plutonium than any other reactor in the United States, and also generated electricity. Some experimental reactors generated electricity for use by DOE facilities.

Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×

TABLE 2.3 Summary of Current Locations of Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in the United Statesa,b (*Denotes decommissioned reactors)

State

Commercial Reactors (MTHM in Storage)

Non-DOE Research Reactors

Navy Reactor Fuel

DOE-Owned Spent Fuel & HLW

Surplus Plutonium

Alabama

Browns Ferry 3 units (1,032);

Farley 2 units (758)

 

Arizona

Palo Verde 3 units (812)

University of Arizona, Tucson

 

Arkansas

Arkansas Nuclear 2 units (730)

 

California

Diablo Canyon 2 units (578)

Rancho Seco 1* 1 unit (228)

San Onofre 1*,2,3 3 units (802)

Humboldt Bay * 1 unit (28.9)

University of California, Irvine; General Electric (1 research, 2 research & test*, 1 power*);

McClellan Air Force Base (now UC Davis);

General Atomics

- MARK 1*

- MARK F*;

Aerotest Research

 

Colorado

Fort St. Vrain* (see DOE-owned fuel)

U.S. Geological Survey

 

Fort St. Vrain* (15.4)

Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site

Connecticut

Haddam Neck* 1 unit (412)

Millstone 1*,2,3 3 units (1061)

 

Florida

Crystal River 1 unit (316)

St. Lucie 2 units (715)

Turkey Point 2 units (720)

University of Florida, Gainesville

 

Georgia

Hatch 2 units (889)

Vogtle 2 units (489)

Georgia Institute of Technology*

 

Idaho

 

Idaho State University, Pocatello

Naval Reactors Facility (19.5)

Idaho National Engineering & Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) (273)

INEEL

Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×

State

Commercial Reactors (MTHM in Storage)

Non-DOE Research Reactors

Navy Reactor Fuel

DOE-Owned Spent Fuel & HLW

Surplus Plutonium

Illinois

Clinton 1 (207)

Quad Cities 2 units (925)

Braidwood 2 units (448)

Zion 2 units* (1018)

Byron 2 units (543)

Dresden 1,* 2, 3 (950)

LaSalle County 1, 2 (555)

General Electricc (674)

University of Illinois, Urbana

- Triga*

- Lopra*

 

Argonne National Laboratory East (0.14)

 

Indiana

 

Purdue University

 

Iowa

Duane Arnold (301)

Iowa State University,* Ames

 

Kansas

Wolf Creek (308)

Kansas State University (Manhattan)

 

Louisiana

Waterford 3 (287)

River Bend 1 (255)

 

Maine

Maine Yankee* (542)

 

Maryland

Calvert Cliffs 1, 2 (741)

University of Maryland, College Park; National Institute of Standards and Technology; Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute; U.S. Army Aberdeen Proving Grounds

 

Massachusetts

Pilgrim 1 (362)

Yankee-Rowe* (127)

Massachusetts Institute of Technology; University of Lowell; Worchester Polytechnic Institute

 

Michigan

Enrico Fermi 2 (235)

Cook 1,2 (885)

Palisades (387)

University of Michigan (Ann Arbor)

 

Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×

State

Commercial Reactors (MTHM in Storage)

Non-DOE Research Reactors

Navy Reactor Fuel

DOE-Owned Spent Fuel & HLW

Surplus Plutonium

Michigan

Big Rock Point* (58)

Dow Chemical Company (Midland)

 

Minnesota

Monticello (193)

Prairie Island 1, 2 (576)

 

Mississippi

Grand Gulf (445)

 

Missouri

Callaway 1 (359)

University of Missouri (Columbia)

University of Missouri (Rolla)

 

Nebraska

Cooper (233)

Fort Calhoun (256)

Veterans Administration (Omaha)

 

New Hampshire

Seabrook (172)

 

New Jersey

Oyster Creek (438)

Salem 1, 2 (625)

Hope Creek (313)

 

New Mexico

 

University of New Mexico

(Albuquerque)

White Sands

Missile Range

 

Sandia National Laboratories

-Annular Core Research Reactor

-Sandia Pulse Reactor III (0.29)

Los Alamos National Laboratory

New York

Nine Mile Point 1,2 (656)

Indian Point 1*, 2, 3 (757)

Fitzpatrick (415)

Ginna (311)

Shoreham* (0)

State University of New York* (Buffalo)

Cornell University

-TRIGA Mark II

-Zero Power* (Ithaca)

Manhattan College* (Bronx)

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy)

 

Brookhaven National Laboratory, including

-High-Flux Beam Reactor*

-Brookhaven Medical Research Reactor (0.06);

West Valley Demonstration Projectd (26.8)

 

North Carolina

Brunswick 1, 2 (486)

Harris (693)

McGuire 1, 2 (848)

North Carolina State University (Raleigh)

 

Ohio

Davis-Besse (315)

Perry (276)

Ohio State University (Columbus);

 

Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×

State

Commercial Reactors (MTHM in Storage)

Non-DOE Research Reactors

Navy Reactor Fuel

DOE-Owned Spent Fuel & HLW

Surplus Plutonium

Ohio

 

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Sandusky)*

 

Oregon

Trojan* (359)

Oregon State University (Corvallis) Reed College

 

Pennsylvania

Susquehanna 1, 2 (777)

Limerick 1, 2 (634)

Peach Bottom 2, 3 (1059)

Three Mile Island 1 (346)

Beaver Valley 1, 2 (521)

Pennsylvania State University; CBS Corporation (Waltz Mill)*; Saxton Nuclear Experimental Corporation (Saxton)*

 

Rhode Island

 

Rhode Island Atomic Energy Commission

 

South Carolina

Robinson 2 (153)

Catawba 1, 2 (603)

Oconee 1, 2, 3 (1,237)

Summer (281)

 

Savannah River Site (67)

 

Tennessee

Sequoyah 1, 2 (598)

Watts Bar (39)

 

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (0.67)

 

Texas

Comanche Peak 1, 2 (322)

South Texas

Project 1, 2 (448)

Texas A&M University (2)

-AGN-201m

-TRIGA (College Station) University of Texas (Austin)

 

Utah

 

University of Utah (Salt Lake City)

 

Vermont

Vermont Yankee (429)

 

Virginia

North Anna 1, 2 (725)

Surry 1, 2 (794)

BWX Technologies, Inc.e

Lynchburg (not at reactor storage)

University of Virginia* (2 reactors) (Charlottesville); Nuclear Ship Savannah, James River Reserve Fleet* (power)

 

Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×

State

Commercial Reactors (MTHM in Storage)

Non-DOE Research Reactors

Navy Reactor Fuel

DOE-Owned Spent Fuel & HLW

Surplus Plutonium

Washington

Washington Nuclear Power 2 (302)

University of Washington (Seattle)*; Washington State University, Pullman

 

Hanford Reservation (2,132f)

Hanford Reservation (Richland)

Wisconsin

Point Beach 1, 2 (582)

Kewaunee (317)

LaCrosse* (38)

University of Wisconsin at Madison

 

Totals:

Locations

118g

(16 shutdown)

47

(9 shutdown)

1

11

6

Sites

72

(9 completely shutdown)

43

(6 completely shutdown)

1

10

6

Spent fuel in storage (MTHM)

38,310h

 

2,496

 

a This table was adapted from (DOE 2000b).

b For commercial reactors, the quantities of spent fuel in storage onsite in 1998 are presented in parentheses in units of metric tons of heavy metal. Data are taken from EIA (1999a). These data are the most recent data available from the U.S. government. Revised data are planned to be published by the end of 2003.

c Commercial spent fuel storage site.

d SNF at West Valley is owned by DOE; West Valley High-Level Waste is currently owned by New York State Energy and Research Development Authority (NYSERDA).

e Fragmentary amounts of commercial fuel stored on site.

f From (DOE 2002a).

g Two away-from-reactor commercial SNF storage locations, i.e., Morris and BWX Lynchburg, not counted in these totals. The following reactors are considered to be colocated (i.e., at the same site): Fitzpatrick/Nine Mile Point; Hope Creek/Salem; and Indian Point 1, 2 and 3.

h Note that the total listed here is the total of the individual plants listed in the table, which differs from (EIA 1999a) totals in part because DOE owned commercial fuel is counted separately here.

on average during 2001 [EIA 2002]) and not having reprocessed fuel from power reactors since 1972.10

10  

Approximately 250 MTHM from commercial reactors were reprocessed at West Valley (DOE 1999a), although detailed records through the U.S. Energy Information Administration are only available on 94 MTHM of spent fuel from Dresden 1 and Humboldt Bay power plants (EIA 1999b). West Valley also reprocessed some SNF from plutonium-production reactors.

Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×

While there is little uniformity among the power-reactor designs, all but three of the reactors that have operated as commercial power reactors in the United States are either boiling-water reactors or pressurized-water reactors. The fuel elements in these reactors are zirconium-alloy tubes containing cylindrical pellets of ceramic UO2, enriched to between 3 and 5 percent. The average burnup in batches of spent fuel discharged from these reactors ranges from nearly zero (for a reactor that shut down shortly after starting operations) up to approximately 45,000 MWd/MTHM. A small liquid-metal-cooled fast breeder reactor (LMFBR), called Fermi Unit 1 (61 MWe), operated in Michigan from 1966 until 1972. A small high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR), Peach Bottom Unit 1 (40 MWe) operated in Pennsylvania from 1967 until 1974. And a larger HTGR, the Fort St. Vrain Nuclear Generating Station (330 MWe), operated in Colorado from 1979 to 1989 and generated 24 MTHM of SNF in the form of prismatic graphite blocks containing silicon-carbide-coated microspheres of thorium carbide and highly enriched uranium carbide. The Fort St. Vrain fuel reached a burnup of about 39,000 MWd/MTHM (U.S. NRC 1999).

2.2.2 Government-Managed Spent Nuclear Fuel in the United States

DOE currently manages approximately 2,500 MTHM of SNF (see Table 2.4),11 which is categorized as “materials-in-inventory” rather than as waste. DOE has over 250 different types of SNF in storage differentiated by isotopic and chemical composition, cladding, and geometry (DOE 2001b). This includes SNF from plutonium-production reactors, naval propulsion systems, test facilities, research reactors, experimental reactors, and demonstration reactors. The United States ceased reprocessing of plutonium-production reactor SNF for nuclear weapons in 1988. The “canyons” at the Hanford Site shut down in 1989. One of SRS’s reprocessing canyons is used for processing unstable fuel. The Idaho Chemical Processing Plant (ICPP) ceased operating in 1992 (DOE 1992a).

As noted earlier, the United States has launched a total of 210 nuclear ships: 191 submarines with one reactor each, 9 aircraft carriers mostly with two reactors each, 9 cruisers with two

11  

DOE (2002a) reports 2,496.4 MTHM, whereas DOE (2001b) reports the mass of SNF in inventory as reported by DOE sites as 2,479.6 MTHM.

Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×

TABLE 2.4 Quantities of U.S. Government SNF and Unirradiated Nuclear Fuel Grouped According to Near-Term Managementa

Near-Term Management

Quantity (MTHM)

Examples

Processed to HLW at ANLW

61.3

Sodium-bonded EBR-II and FFTF fuel

In foreign research reactors

14.3

HEU in Al plates in France, Pakistan, and four other nations

Storage until repository disposal (no further processing)

2,465

N-Reactor fuel, fuel from isotope production reactors, ANP fuel

Special treatment

0.041

Cutting fines from SNF assay, MSRE fuel

Processed to HLW at SRS

23.9

Declad EBR-II uranium metal fuel, declad uranium/thorium fuel

Treatment at ORNL Y-12 plant

0.27

Failed fuel from Roverb

Unknown

996

Unirradiated fuel for the N-reactor, FFTF, EBR-II

Unknown

25.2

Various fuel forms (unclad natural uranium, polyethylene matrices, aluminum) from test piles and research reactors, also unirradiated but damaged fuel (managed as spent fuel)

a All wastes are planned ultimately to be disposed of in a repository.

b Rover was a nuclear rocket prototype reactor with niobium-based fuel.

ANL-W: Argonne National Laboratory West

ANP: Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion

EBR-II: Experimental Breeder Reactor-II, at Argonne National Laboratory West

FFTF: Fast Flux Test Facility, at Hanford

MSRE: Molten Salt Reactor Experiment

ORNL: Oak Ridge National Laboratory

SRS: Savannah River Site

SOURCE: DOE (2002a).

reactors each,12 1 deep-submergence research vessel with one reactor (USNR 2001), and 1 civilian cargo ship with one reactor. All of the cruisers, the cargo ship, and 119 of the submarines have been removed from service (USNR 2001).13 “Unlike civilian spent nuclear fuel which, after removal from the reactor, is currently

12  

The only exceptions were the submarine U.S.S. TRITON SS(R)N 586, which was launched with two reactors in 1958 and decommissioned in 1969, and the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Enterprise, which has eight reactors.

13  

The 119 submarines removed from service include 2 that were lost at sea and 2 that were converted to training platforms.

Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×

stored in plants around the country, all pre-examination naval spent nuclear fuel is shipped to one place, INEEL, for examination and temporary storage pending ultimate disposition…” (U.S. Navy 1996).

For over 40 years, “naval spent fuel has been shipped by rail in shielded shipping containers from naval shipyards and prototypes to the Expended Core Facility on the Naval Reactors Facility in Idaho where it is removed from the shipping containers and placed into water pools…” (DOE 1995). The pools are at the ICPP. “A total of approximately 65 metric tons (heavy metal) of naval spent nuclear fuel will exist by the year 2035.” In 1996, DOE and the Navy decided to put the spent fuel at INEEL into dry storage using dual purpose canisters, which would serve both as storage containers at INEEL and as transport containers to a future repository (DOE 1996a). Until being shipped for disposal, these canisters are to be stored at the Naval Reactors Facility at INEEL (DOE 1997b).

“Naval nuclear fuel is designed to meet the stringent operational requirements for naval nuclear propulsion reactors…. Current designs are capable of more than 20 years of successful operation without refueling…. Measurements of the corrosion rates for naval fuel designs have shown that post-examination naval spent nuclear fuel can be safely stored wet or dry for periods much longer than…40 years…” (U.S. Navy 1996, pp. 2–3).

The Navy’s program for decommissioned nuclear ships “involves defueling the reactor, inactivating the ship, removing the reactor compartment for land disposal, recycling the remainder of the ship to the maximum extent practical and disposing of the remaining non-recyclable materials.” This takes place at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Washington State. In 1984, the “Navy decided to dispose of the reactor compartments at the Department of Energy’s Hanford site. The first reactor compartment was shipped…to the Hanford site for disposal in 1986…. As of April 1999, the Navy has successfully shipped 79 reactor compartments to Hanford…” (U.S. Navy 1999). “With the ship in drydock…the fuel is removed into a shielded transfer container [and then] placed into specially-designed shipping containers” (p.3). The defueling process “removes over 99% of the radioactivity, and some small amount remains in the reactor plant after the nuclear fuel is removed [that] was created by neutron irradiation of the iron and alloying elements in the metal components during operation of the plant” (p.6). The ICPP reprocessed 44 MTHM of U.S. government

Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×

spent nuclear fuel (mostly naval fuel) between 1953 and 1992 to recover highly enriched uranium (NRC 1999b). The ICPP was renamed the Idaho Nuclear Technology & Engineering Center in 1998, and the facilities are currently used to store spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste, treat radioactive waste, and develop waste management technologies. After the submarine reactor compartment is cut out and removed from the hull, shipyard fabricated bulkheads are welded to the ends. For cruisers, a complete package is fabricated for the reactor compartment. The compartment is loaded on a barge and sent to Hanford.

Some of the experimental reactors used exotic fuels, such as nickel-alloy fuel from the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion Program and molten-salt fuel from the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE).

In the 1970s in the United States, as many as 70 research reactors were operated by universities and dozens of research and test reactors were operated for government and private research. Today, 36 civilian (non-DOE and non-military) research reactors operate and 13 are in the process of decommissioning (one of these is a small power reactor) (U.S. NRC 2002b). The thermal output of these reactors ranges from 0.10 watt to 20 megawatts. Several reactors are operated by the DOE national laboratories and the military in the United States. In addition, the United States has provided fuel for 110 research reactors in other countries (DOE 2002a). The United States has a program to take back highly enriched uranium fuel from these foreign research reactors. Much of the highly enriched foreign research reactor fuel has been returned to the United States and resides at SRS and at INEEL, but approximately 2.7 MTHM of highly enriched fuel of U.S. origin are still at research reactors in over 30 nations (including small amounts in Iran, Israel, Pakistan, and the Philippines). It is hoped that these will return to the United States (DOE 2002a), along with the approximately 11.6 MTHM of fuel with initial enrichment of 20 percent or less.

DOE also has 998.3 MTHM of unirradiated fuel, 2.3 MTHM of which are managed as SNF because they are damaged. Over 95 percent of the unirradiated fuel is N-Reactor fuel at Hanford that was not fully finished in the fabrication process or that was finished and loaded but never irradiated in the reactor. Disposition paths have not been selected for these unirradiated fuels, although they may ultimately be treated as waste. The DOE SNF and unirradiated fuel mentioned above together with the approximately 22.9 MTHM of contact-handled SNF that has no assigned

Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×

disposition path (most of this is lightly irradiated material from a test pile at SRS) constitute the total 3,518.22 MTHM of nuclear fuel DOE currently manages. DOE approximates it will have another 67 MTHM from naval and research reactors by 2035.

DOE plans to treat or chemically process fuel that is not suitable for disposal in its present form. Much of this SNF is from government sources, but some is from commercial reactors. Treatment includes activities such as vacuum drying the N-Reactor spent fuel that is sitting in the storage pools. Fragments and sludge from N-reactor fuel (some of which is badly corroded) may be shipped for disposal at WIPP.

Processing converts the highly radioactive constituents of the SNF into high-level waste. Aqueous chemical processing will be carried out at SRS’s Canyons for what is termed “at risk” fuel— fuel that is damaged or corroded. Argonne National Laboratory West will use electrochemical processes developed there to process sodium-bonded SNF (SNF made with liquid metal in the gap between the fuel and its cladding to facilitate heat transfer). The different disposition paths and examples of the SNF associated with these paths are presented in Table 2.4.

2.3 DISPOSITION OF EXCESS WEAPONS PLUTONIUM

Disposition of excess weapons plutonium is connected to this study because the options for disposition include processing that would lead to managing the material as SNF or HLW.

As thousands of nuclear weapons are dismantled under the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties (START I and II) and under initiatives by both the United States and the Russian Federation, tens of metric tons (MT) of weapons-grade plutonium and hundreds of metric tons of highly enriched uranium have been declared surplus to the needs of each nation’s military program. The surplus material poses a security risk because of the possibility it might be stolen and used to construct a nuclear weapon. As a beginning, the U.S.-Russia Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement (PMDA), signed in September 2000, states that each nation is to dispose of 34 MT of surplus defense plutonium. This agreement does not cover all of the plutonium each nation has declared excess to defense needs, but it is a first step.

Russia and the United States have been working on finding disposition paths that are technically sound and that satisfy de-

Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×

mands driven by domestic policy and international relations. From the outset, Russia has expressed its desire to fabricate plutonium-uranium mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel with the excess material, and to irradiate that fuel in existing VVER-1000 reactors and its BN-600 reactor, although Russia would prefer to use the fuel in a future BN-800. The United States has been less consistent in its planning.

The United States began assessing alternatives for plutonium disposition in 1992 when the federal government asked the National Academy of Sciences to carry out a study of the management and disposition options available (NAS 1994). Following that study, DOE’s laboratories examined dozens of technologies for plutonium disposition. DOE announced in January 1997 its intention to pursue a dual-track disposition strategy: (1) fabricating the clean plutonium into MOX fuel and irradiating that fuel in existing domestic reactors (approximately 26 MT of plutonium); and (2) immobilizing the impure plutonium, which was deemed unsuitable for MOX fuel, in a ceramic waste form encased in vitrified HLW (approximately 8 MT of plutonium).14 This decision was reaffirmed in 2000, but in 2001, the new DOE leadership announced that the existing plan would take too long and be too expensive. After a review of the options, DOE decided to eliminate the immobilization program and only pursue the MOX option. DOE concluded that 6.2 MT of the 8 MT of impure plutonium could be processed by aqueous polishing in a new facility to be constructed at the front end of the MOX fuel-fabrication plant at SRS, after which the material would be suitable for MOX. This still leaves 1.8 MT from the U.S.-Russia agreement that must go into the disposition program, and these are to be made up by future declarations of surplus material. The actual quantity of impure plutonium (often referred to as “dirty” plutonium) that DOE manages and how the plutonium is to be disposed of have not been made clear. Finding a disposition path for the impure plutonium is not a trivial task because, most likely, it is not currently in a form that is suitable for disposal. Developing a disposition path will require a clearer picture of the technological options available, which in turn depends on having a clear picture of the quantity and character of the material.

14  

There is a program of cooperation between the United States and Russia on disposition of excess weapons plutonium. The program, funded through the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, covers waste form development as well as plutonium storage, packaging, and transportation; spent fuel storage, packaging and transportation; and treatment of plutonium-bearing wastes. See Jardine and Borisov (2002).

Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×

Current DOE plans are to complete designs for the MOX fuel-fabrication facility in 2003, to complete construction in 2004, to complete the licensing by the 2005, and to begin hot startup of the facility in 2007. The first MOX fuel would be loaded into a reactor in August of 2008 and full scale operations would run from 2009 through 2019.15 The U.S. Congress has indicated that progress through this schedule is contingent upon progress on similar efforts in the Russian Federation, because the programs are coupled to a negotiated agreement. At the same time, from a technical perspective, this is an ambitious schedule, particularly since there is not yet a decision on how to manufacture the “lead test assemblies” (the first trial fuel assemblies) so that they can be tested and licensed for use in a commercial reactor, and because one of the two utilities that had originally signed up for the MOX program has pulled out. While this will not be the first MOX fuel in U.S. light-water reactors (see Cowell and Fisher 1999, Chap. 3), the United States does not have any recent operational experience with MOX fuel in power reactors. Further, the composition of the Pu is different. DOE will need a plan for manufacturing the lead test assemblies and will need that plan soon if it is to keep to a schedule close to the one it put forward.

Making progress on the materials-disposition program is important to both countries, but steady progress will be difficult without clearer plans.

2.4 END POINTS

As defined in Section 1.3, the committee differentiates between interim and final end points. All methods of treating spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste lead to some highly radioactive material that must be sequestered at least for many centuries. A recent report from the National Research Council (2001a) concluded that the only final method of sequestration that would not require continual monitoring and funding is geological disposal. However, local political difficulties have made developing such sites difficult. Adhering to the process established in the law governing disposal of HLW in the United States (NWPA 1982), the U.S. Congress voted to override the state of Nevada’s veto of

15  

The current schedule was provided by Kenneth Bromberg, program integration director for the Plutonium Disposition Program at DOE, in a conversation with staff on December 20, 2002.

Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×

President Bush’s decision to pursue a repository at Yucca Mountain. It was unclear until the time of the vote (July 9, 2002) whether the override effort would succeed. In addition, even if a geological repository is developed, there will be large amounts of HLW and SNF that must be stored and protected for decades before a repository will be ready to accept the material.

The United States has large amounts of HLW from nuclear weapons programs and large amounts of SNF, primarily from operation of commercial reactors to generate electricity. As discussed in other sections, the defense waste is stored in tanks, some of which have leaked and many of which have waste mixtures that are poorly characterized. Two of the tanks at SRS have been emptied and closed. Until recently, the DOE program was to do the same with all of the other tanks, that is, remove all these wastes, immobilize them (specifically to vitrify them, although other immobilization technologies are under examination), store the immobilized waste, and then ultimately send the product to the geological repository expected to be developed. In this past year, the Environmental Management Office of the DOE reviewed its program and stated its intent to accelerate the cleanup of the defense sites. DOE has entered into agreements with regulators at the sites to consider alternative ways to manage the wastes and accelerate cleanup, which may include leaving some waste at the sites (e.g., stabilized by grouting tank sludge in place).

Commercial SNF has been stored at the reactors in pools and after pools get filled, in dry casks. The final end point is to be the geological repository.

Russia has chosen to reprocess most of its SNF using the “closed” fuel cycle. As in the United States, the final end point for HLW is planned to be geological repositories of vitrified waste located, however, at the reprocessing sites. Later sections discuss the programs in Russia to find appropriate interim and final sites. The Russian program has used phosphate glass, unlike the United States, which uses borosilicate glass. However, experimental studies (Zotov et al., 1996) have shown that aluminum-phosphate glass is unacceptable for long-term isolation required for HLW and can be used only for immobilization of short- and medium-lived radionuclides. Nevertheless, this form of HLW vitrification is safer than storage of HLW in a liquid form. Studies are being carried out on synthesis of glass-crystalline waste forms for HLW that are a few orders of magnitude more durable against leaching than aluminum-phosphate glass is (Matyunin 2002; Rovny et al. 2002).

Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×

2.5 FUEL-CYCLE STEPS AND END POINTS FOR SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL

Nuclear fuel cycles can be constructed from a small number of fuel-cycle steps, arranged and repeated so as to achieve the desired result. These steps include production of fissile material (through enrichment or through recovery from processed irradiated fuel), fuel fabrication, storage, transportation, irradiation in a reactor, reprocessing, and disposal. The storage and disposal steps are discussed below in the context of end points.

In the closed cycle, the SNF is reprocessed (the current preferred term of the nuclear industry is “processed”) to separate out the large amount of remaining uranium and the plutonium that was produced during reactor operations. The short half-life isotopes that are the principal sources of both heat and radioactivity (Cs and Sr) are separated in another stream while still further separation can be done for other fission products. Fuel cycles can, to some extent, be tailored to change or reduce waste streams (see Sidebar 2.1), but while the duration and technology needed for the fuel-cycle steps might change, the need for storage and disposal cannot be eliminated.

2.5.1 Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel16

Spent-fuel-storage technologies are generally designed to prevent releases of radionuclides, exposure of workers, and theft or loss. Radioactive decay within the fuel and criticality events can cause both releases, resulting from overheating, and direct worker exposures, if SNF is not stored properly. Some SNF is a potential target for theft, because the fissile and other radioactive constituents could be used to construct a nuclear or radiological weapon.

The technology for interim storage of SNF in surface facilities is well established, and generally falls into one of two categories: wet storage or dry storage. Wet storage uses water to cool the SNF and to shield against penetrating radiation. Because of cooling demands, SNF freshly removed from a reactor typically needs to be stored in a cooling pool. Cooling pools are typically steel reinforced concrete structures with stainless steel or epoxy liners. The pool may be covered or open to the air, but any cover

16  

A recent report by Bunn et al. (2001) describes different aspects of interim storage of SNF.

Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×

SIDEBAR 2.1: Transmutation

“Any intense source of neutrons, such as a…fast reactor…or an accelerator-driven subcritical reactor, can accomplish transmutation of long-lived radionuclides. The physical requirements for neutron intensity and the energy requirements to achieve such intensity make it necessary to partition, or separate, the long-lived radionuclides to be transmuted from the uranium, the fuel rod cladding and other components in SNF and HLW. Partitioning is essentially the same as reprocessing spent fuel to recover plutonium and uranium…” (NRC 2001a, pp. 119–120).

This approach has been discussed for several years, and was summarized in a 1999 NEA report.

“An approach that has been claimed to have the potential to change the future of geological disposal is partitioning and transmutation (P&T) of long-lived radionuclides to give wastes which have shorter half-lives and therefore do not present as serious a chal-lenge to the isolation capacity of repositories” (NEA 1999a).

At the request of the U.S. Congress, DOE has studied the potential of accelerator transmutation of waste (ATW). A DOE report (1999b) concluded:

  • There would be benefits in reduction in long-term radiation doses from the HLW stream.

  • “[A] repository is still required due to the presence of defense wastes, which are not readily treatable by accelerator transmutation of waste, and the long-lived radioactivity generated by ATW operations.”

  • The report proposed a six-year $280 million R&D program.

  • If the R&D were successful, an additional $280 billion would be necessary, with the program lasting a century.

A previous National Research Council study (1996a) on separations and transmutation also concluded that the need for a geologic repository would not be eliminated by transmutation, and that repository doses could be reduced by transmutation (particularly for intrusion scenarios), although the changes in doses would be small, particularly when the whole fuel cycle is examined.

A recent paper by Lowenthal (2002) notes that “transmutation can be described as reducing disposal inventories by increasing current

Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×

Handling and operations.” This presents several tradeoffs regarding types of hazards: radiological, safeguards and proliferation, and criticality.

Both the United States and Russia are investigating partitioning and transmutation. The United States is doing so in the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative and Russia in its on going examination of fuel cycles involving fast reactors and reprocessing spent nuclear fuel.

must be removable so as to allow for an overhead crane to maneuver the fuel assemblies and any containers in which they are stored. The water is actively cooled by pumping it through a heat exchanger. The racks that hold fuel assemblies in spent fuel pools are configured to prevent criticality and, if the geometry itself is insufficient, plates loaded with boron are placed between the assemblies or boric acid is added to the water to absorb neutrons. The water chemistry is actively controlled to maintain the boron concentration in the water, to reduce the rate of corrosion of the fuel cladding, and to remove radionuclides that might have leaked through failed cladding.

Dry storage can be in vaults, silos, or casks17 and relies on air or inert gases (such as nitrogen, or helium) to provide cooling. Dry storage is most appropriate for SNF that is past the initial period after removal from a reactor when its heat-generation rate is highest. In most dry storage designs, the spent fuel assemblies (SFAs) are sealed in an inert atmosphere inside a steel canister that is welded shut.

Vaults are typically concrete structures with many compartments to hold the canisters. The canisters prevent release of radioactive dust and volatile fission products and protect the fuel from chemical reaction. Cooling is accomplished by either forced or natural air convection around the canisters and biological shielding is provided by the concrete structure. Vaults generally rely on geometry to prevent spontaneous chain reactions (criticality events).

Silos are concrete cylinders that serve as sleeves for canisters, emplaced either vertically or horizontally, providing shielding and physical protection for the fuel. Vertical silos typically ac-

17  

The translation of the Russian terminology to English results in vaults being referred to as chambers and silos as reinforced concrete massifs. Rather than adopt one over standard usage over the other, the standard terminology is kept and the difference is noted.

Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×

commodate several canisters in one concrete cylinder. Silos rely on passive convective airflow along the outside of the sealed canisters to provide cooling, and so have holes for inlet and outlet of the air. Silos are constructed on a concrete pad.

Dry storage casks are combined systems that provide shielding and prevent releases of radioactive materials and are moved as integral units. Spent fuel assemblies can be loaded directly into the casks, which are typically made of steel or steel-reinforced concrete with a steel liner. The limited number of assemblies in each cask or silo, and the lack of water acting as moderator surrounding the SNF reduce the concerns about criticality (unless the fuel is highly enriched). Borated steel plates are still, nonetheless, commonly used as a safety measure, particularly for casks that are loaded under water. Some casks can be used for both transportation and storage (dual-purpose casks).

Both wet storage and dry storage have excellent safety records, although there is the potential for storage pools to lose their water as a result of leaks, and thereby lose their shielding and cooling.

Dry storage has increased in popularity among reactor operators as demand for storage capacity beyond that available in the at-reactor storage pool has increased. In these cases, older fuel can be loaded into dry storage. Both the initial capital costs and the continuing operating costs of dry storage are lower than for wet storage.

Some forms of storage, such as interim storage in the reactor compartments of decommissioned submarines, storage in maintenance vessels, and storage in the open air, are undesirable. These are not safe and secure forms of storage, so they are not appropriate end points, interim or final.

Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel in Russia

In Russia, cooling pools at nuclear power plants are designed, as a rule, for a three-year storage period during which the heating from radioactive decay drops dramatically (e.g., by a factor of nearly 12,000 for VVER-1000 SNF). Then the fuel is transported for reprocessing or interim storage. Spent fuel from VVER-440 reactors and the BN-600 reactor is sent for reprocessing to the RT-1 plant at PA “Mayak,” where it is stored in a large pool until it is chopped up and reprocessed in the plant.

Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×

More than 8,700 MTHM of RBMK SNF with total radioactivity of 3.1 billion curies are stored in cooling pools at the power plants and at separate wet-storage facilities onsite. At the Leningrad Nuclear Power Station, for example, fuel is stored for three to five years in the cooling pool adjacent to the reactor building, then is loaded into a cask full of water and moved to a storage building nearby on the site (NAS 1990). Approximately 3,000 fuel assemblies are breached, which complicates handling and storage.

Dry storage is expected to replace pool storage for all of the fuel in coming years. It is anticipated that the roughly 8-meter-long RBMK fuel assemblies will have to be cut in two to fit inside the dry storage casks. Russia does not currently ship any RBMK SNF, with the exception of transportation of half-assemblies for post-reactor tests in hot cells.

The decision on the long-term plan for RBMK fuel management has not been made yet. Several approaches are possible and are now under consideration. Although accumulation of RBMK SNF at the power plant site can lead to difficulties when the plant is to be decommissioned,18 this spent fuel is not seen as a proliferation or an immediate health hazard, so it is the committee’s judgment that leaving it in place is a reasonable allocation of scarce resources. Nevertheless, to prevent theft for possible use in a radiological weapon, this spent fuel must be protected at the sites.

At present, approximately 1,500 VVER-1000 fuel assemblies (about 680 MTHM) with total activity of 600 million curies are stored in cooling pools at the power plants, which are about 40 percent full. In addition, there is a centralized wet-storage facility for VVER-1000 fuel at the Krasnoyarsk MCC. This centralized facility has a storage capacity of 15,000 fuel assemblies (about 6,000 MTHM), which is about 37 percent filled today. Moreover, an unfinished part of the facility has a capacity of up to an additional 3,000 MTHM. The VVER-1000 SNF cannot be reprocessed at RT-1 unless upgrades are made to one of the process lines. The RT-2 plant that was planned to be built at the Krasnoyarsk MCC was designed to process VVER-1000 SNF and other fuels. Some structures were built for RT-2 before the project was halted for lack of funds, and these are now being adapted for storage. Once modernized, the facility capacity will be increased up to 9,000 MTHM. About 50 breached VVER-1000 fuel assemblies are

18  

In particular, a tariff on nuclear power plant operations provides funds for management of SNF. These funds are not available after decommissioning.

Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×

currently stored in separate sections of the pools at the power plants, and are planned to be shipped to RT-1 by 2007. There are now plans to construct a wet-storage facility with a capacity of 1,700 MTHM at PA “Mayak.”

The SNF from the Beloyarsk nuclear power plant was unloaded and kept in dry storage at the site (190 MTHM of SNF in 5,000 fuel assemblies) and in the PA “Mayak” cooling ponds (76 MTHM of SNF in 2,200 fuel assemblies). Most of these fuel assemblies are breached. The Bilibino power station has accumulated 164 MTHM (6,500 assemblies) of SNF, none of which are breached. Some of this SNF has already been transferred to a dry storage facility at the power plant site.

As mentioned above, Minatom is currently considering adding new dry-storage facilities using the uncompleted buildings at the site of RT-2. The facility would be financed by Rosenergoatom. A decision has been made that it should be a vault-type (chamber-type) storage facility with a capacity of 33,000 MTHM. To provide interim RBMK SNF storage at the power plant sites, dual-purpose casks, the TUK-104 and TUK-109 with capacities of 114 and 144 irradiated half-assemblies of RBMK-1000 fuel, have been developed. The same casks can be used to transport SNF to a centralized facility.

Russia is studying the condition, possible degradation modes, and maximum thermal loads of its irradiated SNF in order to develop its dry-storage capabilities. In particular, studies focus on the condition of structural materials in irradiated fuel assemblies that have been in wet storage, and on how these materials might degrade in dry storage. Quantitative models for assessing the thermal conditions and material behavior are being developed so that appropriate storage regimes (temperatures, environment, etc.) can be selected.

Spent nuclear fuel from the Northern Fleet’s NPSs that has not yet been shipped for reprocessing at PA “Mayak” is currently stored in shore technical bases at Andreeva Bay and at the Gremikha settlement, as well as in storage tanks of floating technical bases (FTBs), and on board decommissioned NPSs. A technical base is a facility for servicing, fueling and defueling, and decommissioning and dismantling of nuclear-powered submarines. In 1998, there were about 8,300 SFAs of reprocessible SNF stored at naval FTBs, NPSs that await defueling, and FTBs for the nuclear-powered ice-breaker fleet. The total of defect fuel, which is unreprocessible, at coastal technical bases was about 4,400

Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×

SFAs. The problems associated with storing the cores from nuclear-powered submarines are mostly due to the lack of needed infrastructure (i.e., lifting and transport facilities, coastal structures, and interim regional storage facilities that are insufficient both in number and in capacity). But it is also true that many of the SFAs in storage and the storage facilities themselves, particularly the FTBs and NPSs, are in very poor condition and constitute serious hazards.

Andreeva Bay hosts the largest SNF-storage facility in the region. The facility operated a storage pool until 1983 when, as a result of the poor condition of the facility, it was decided to construct a temporary facility for short-term (three to four years) dry storage and to transfer the stored SNF to this new facility (Bøhmer et al. 2001; Nilsen et al. 1996). The short-term storage facility has been in operation for over 18 years. The facility is now full, but it would not be able to accept new SNF in any case because of structural shortcomings and because the facility does not comply with current safety requirements (Bøhmer et al. 2001; Ivanov et al 1999). A total of 21,640 SFAs are stored at the shore technical base at Andreeva Bay, including 220 SFAs that are stored in containers that sit in an open area (not enclosed in a building) (Bøhmer et al. 2001).

The Gremikha settlement hosts the Northern Fleet’s second largest storage facility for SNF. The facility was planned to store SNF from light-water reactors of the first generation of NPSs and spent retrievable elements from NPSs with liquid-metal-cooled reactors.

The storage facility consists of drained cooling ponds (100 SFA), containers in an open-air site (700 SFA), and a concrete shaft for retrievable elements of reactors with liquid-metal coolant (6 units). The facility is in a generally poor state.

At present, two Project 2020 FTBs (Malina class service ships) are the only ones available in the Northern Navy and capable of executing all of the steps from unloading of SNF from NPS reactors to transferring the fuel for railway transport (Ivanov et al. 1999). One FTB is at the shore base in Olenya Cuba (Kola Peninsula) and the other one is in the area of Severodvinsk (Arkhangelsk region). Each FTB has tanks in which operators store containers of SFAs. The number of SFAs that a tank holds depends on the characteristics of the SFAs, but each FTB can store the SNF from two NPSs (Ivanov et al. 1999). The actual inventory at

Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×

any given time varies depending upon the refueling, defueling, and storage demands.

The civilian ice-breaker fleet of the Murmansk Shipping Company has three of its own FTBs, which store the fleet’s SNF. The ships are Imandra, Lotta, and Lepse. All of these FTBs are moored at the Repair-Technological Enterprise “Atomflot.” The storage tanks on Imandra can accommodate up to 1,530 SFA, or about 6 cores from the ice-breaker reactors (Bøhmer et al. 2001; Nilsen and Bøhmer 1994). Imandra has also been used to defuel NPSs from the Navy (Bøhmer et al 2001). Lotta uses dry storage to accommodate as many as 4,080 SFAs loaded into containers, although some of that total is devoted to unreprocessible SFAs that are stored until a disposition path is found (Bøhmer et al. 2001; Nilsen and Bøhmer 1994). Lepse, the oldest of these FTBs, was used until 1980 for reloading of nuclear fuel and for storage of fresh and spent nuclear fuel from nuclear-powered icebreakers Lenin, Arktika, and Sibir. Lepse, unlike the other FTBs, stores each of its approximately 640 SFAs in a separate cell. The cell cannot be removed without disturbing the ship’s structure. All of the SNF on Lepse is over 20 years old, and although the cells were filled with water during earlier operations, the SFAs are now stored dry. During the years of wet storage, the SFAs corroded enough to change their geometry and now cannot be removed from the cells, so all of Lepse’s SFAs are deemed “non-retrievable” (Ruzankin and Makeyenko 2000; Safutin et al. 1999). Lepse was decommissioned in 1988 and moored in place in 1990. In 1991, in order to provide additional shielding, the space between the SNF storage tanks was filled with special concrete mixtures (Bøhmer et al. 2001).

About 60 decommissioned NPS containing roughly 26,000 SFAs (as of 2001) sit floating near the coastal bases and await defueling (Bøhmer et al. 2001; Sinisoo 1995; Alekseyev 2001). This is the equivalent of about 110 cores. Decommissioned NPS are not well prepared to sit afloat for long periods without regular maintenance (Ruzankin and Makeyenko 2000), and the older ships (those that have sat for over 10 years), which total roughly 30 (Atomic Chronicle of Russia 2000), pose the greatest potential radiological hazard. Because of the much higher enrichment in maritime fuel compared with power reactor fuel, this SNF must be included in a MPC&A program.

Plans have been developed for a repository for interim storage of SNF from NPSs and for disposal of other nuclear materials on the Kola Peninsula.

Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel in the United States

The majority of U.S. SNF is that generated at commercial power reactors. Most of this SNF is stored at the generation sites, either in pools or in dry-storage casks. As of December 31, 2001, there were 3,000 MTHM of spent fuel in dry cask storage and 42,000 MTHM in pool storage, for a total of 45,000 MTHM (Holt 2002).

Sixteen power-plant sites and two DOE facilities are licensed by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for dry-cask storage (U.S. NRC 2001). Each kind of dry storage facility—vaults, silos, and casks (chambers, reinforced massifs, and casks)—has been built in the United States (Bunn et al. 2001). Some SNF, particularly from older reactors, was shipped for storage offsite at independent spent fuel storage installations in Illinois at the Midwest Fuel Recovery Plant (674 MTHM) and in New York at the West Valley Demonstration Project (26 MTHM). Some SNF seen as special cases are stored in Idaho at INEEL (171 MTHM and at other DOE facilities (26 MTHM) (DOE 2002a). Several older commercial reactors had their SNF reprocessed at West Valley, and a small amount was reprocessed at SRS.

Some DOE-managed SNF is undergoing modest treatment to allow for safe storage, packaging, and disposal. Nearly 85 percent of this set is spent fuel from the N-Reactor at Hanford, some of which is highly corroded. Most of the irradiated N-Reactor fuel (roughly 2,100 MT containing 4 MT of plutonium, 105,000 assemblies, amounting to 55×106 Ci) is stored in the K-East and K-West Basins (cooling pools) along with a small amount (974 fuel elements) of SNF from the older reactors at Hanford (Gerber 2001; DOE 2000c). N-Reactor fuel is solid uranium metal with zirconium-alloy cladding, and the SNF in the K-Basins has been stored for 15 to 31 years. The SNF from the older “single-pass” reactors is aluminum-silicon clad. Some of the N-Reactor SNF was damaged (breaks in the cladding) during discharge and, over the years, water has seeped in and oxidized some of the fuel, causing it to swell and damage the cladding. The oxidized fuel sloughs off and accumulates as sludge in the canisters. The SNF has been visually inspected and the following assessment found in DOE (2000c, DOE 2002b) was made (see Table 2.5).

“Intact fuel” has no evidence of cladding breach of deposited sludge; “breached fuel” has minor cladding ruptures with no

Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×

TABLE 2.5 Assessment of Fuel Stored in the K Basins

Damage Category

K West Basin

K East Basin

Intact fuel

50%

49%

Breached fuel

39%

9%

Defected fuel

0%

38%

Bad fuel

11%

4%

 

SOURCE: DOE (2002b).

reacted fuel or deposited sludge visibly present; “defected fuel” has definite evidence of cladding breach with reacted fuel escaping as oxide or sludge from the element; and “bad fuel” has gross cladding failure with substantial element dilation, clad splitting, element deformation, or fuel void.

Exposed fuel has contaminated the water in the pools. The SNF in the K-East Basin (51,000 assemblies) sits in 3,700 canisters that have no caps, so one or both ends of the canisters allow free flow of water. The K-East Basin walls and floors were not sealed before the fuel was loaded into the pool and water has leaked on two occasions: releasing approximately 5.4×104 m3 of contaminated water into the subsurface through a floor joint in the late 1970s, and releasing about 340 m3 in 1993 (Gerber 2001). The walls of the K-West Basin were coated with sealant and the cans in that pool are capped, so fewer problems are anticipated in treating that fuel.

Treatment of the fuel involves several steps to be carried out under water: removing canister lids (if they are present), cleaning the fuel to remove corrosion products, loading the fuel into baskets and placing the baskets in a single 14-foot long, 2-foot diameter multi-canister overpack. The baskets are configured to prevent criticality, and specialized copper baskets have been designed to hold fuel scraps ranging from fines up to 3 inches across. (As of December 2002, the project had accumulated nearly 6 tons of fines.) The fuel is then dried, which is accomplished by cold vacuum drying. The canister is then shipped to a vault-type storage facility made of steel reinforced concrete. The storage facility will hold 400 of the multi-canister overpacks in 220 steel tubes that extend 12 meters below the facility floor. Passive cooling is provided by convective air flow (Gerber 2001). As of December 2002, 167 multi-canister overpacks had been loaded and all but 2 were in the storage facility. The fuel is to be stored for 40 years, or until a repository is available to accept the fuel for disposal.

Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×

About 50 cubic meters of sludge with varied composition (uranium oxides and hydrides, cladding debris, and various corrosion products) has accumulated on the K-Basin floors, in the canisters, and in the basin pits. Over 80 percent of the sludge is in the K-East Basin. The current plan for this material is to package it and store it until a disposition path for the material is identified.

The program to process the N-Reactor fuel and place it in dry storage had an ambitious schedule. All of the fuel was to be processed by the end of 2003. Early milestones were missed, but DOE has now treated most of the fuel from the K-West Basin and has transferred some of the fuel from the K-East Basin and treated it for storage. The committee notes that progress is being made on the K-Basin fuel, but thus far the program has only addressed the fuel that is in better condition. The more difficult work, dealing with the most damaged fuel in the K-East Basin and the fines and sludge, is still ahead.

Other SNF, such as aluminum fuels from research reactors around the world and production reactors within DOE, require some kind of treatment to make them safe for storage and disposal. Workers at SRS, where DOE is gathering and storing the research reactor fuel, are developing a “melt and dilute” technology for the highly enriched aluminum SNF, termed “at risk” SNF because of security and criticality concerns. The sodium-bonded SNF from the Experimental Breeder Reactor-II is being treated using electrometallurgical processes (also called pyroprocessing) in an experimental apparatus at the Argonne National Laboratory West (DOE 2000d).

DOE manages batches of fuel that must be treated as special cases. The most dramatic example that has already been treated is the 81.5 MTHM of fuel and fuel debris from the Three Mile Island (TMI) plant’s Unit 2 reactor, which underwent a partial core melt during an accident on March 28, 1979. Some of the fuel elements are in good condition, but others melted into a mixture of the fuel, cladding, control rods, burnable poisons, and other reactor components. Nearly all of the fuel and fuel debris from the accident is stored at INEEL, where it is being dried and transferred from pool storage to the TMI Dry Storage Facility. This fuel and fuel debris is currently planned to be disposed of in a geologic repository along with other spent fuel. Other fuel that has not yet been processed or treated includes fine particles from cutting SNF inside hot cells for assay, and the MSRE fuel, which is no longer molten.

Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×

2.5.2 Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuel and HLW

The United States currently plans to dispose of commercial spent nuclear fuel directly, without chemical processing. The fuel assemblies are to be loaded into metal canisters, sealed, and shipped for disposal in a mined geologic repository. Under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, the federal government is supposed to take title to this fuel and put it into a geologic repository. DOE is responsible for the disposal of commercial and defense SNF, as well as other HLW. To fund the commercial SNF portion of this program, a tax of 0.001 dollars per kilowatt-hour is placed on the electricity sold by each nuclear power station19 and some government funds have been appropriated from defense programs to cover approximately one-third of the program costs to date. It is this funding that has been used to investigate the Yucca Mountain site, in Nevada, as a possible location for the first HLW repository (see Sidebar 2.2).

After two decades of study by the Department of Energy, the President of the United States approved the department’s proposal to apply to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license to construct a repository at this site. The governor of the state of Nevada vetoed the proposal, but the United States Congress over-rode that veto. The official DOE program plan is to submit a license application by December 2004. The U.S. NRC would then take three years (possibly four) to review the application and to decide whether to grant authorization for construction. DOE hopes to have construction authorization by the end of 2007 and to open the repository in 2010. Most external commenters believe this ambitious schedule is unrealistic based on the time needed for each step. In addition, several lawsuits that attempt to block the various steps in the process have been filed. The spent fuel will sit in some form of interim storage until a repository is available.

The generators of the commercial SNF have historically been responsible for the costs of storing the SNF prior to disposal, but as schedules for disposal of the SNF are pushed into the future, lawsuits have been filed demanding that DOE cover the costs. Courts are in the process of deciding on these lawsuits.

19  

Only about half of the tax collected has been used for the disposal program, with the rest put into the U.S. Treasury for general purposes.

Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×

SIDEBAR 2.2: The Planned Repository at Yucca Mountain

Yucca Mountain is located about 160 kilometers northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada, at the western edge of the Nevada Test Site (where testing of nuclear weapons was carried out). The area surrounding the site is sparsely populated and receives an average of 17.0 centimeters of precipitation per year. The mountain is made up of a volcanic ash, called tuff, which was deposited approximately 12 million years ago. The mountain has been under investigation for over 20 years as a potential host for the first mined geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste (HLW) in the United States, and the Congress has given approval for DOE to proceed with a license application to construct the repository. The proposed design would place the repository in a layer of welded tuff in the unsaturated zone, approximately 300 meters below the surface and approximately 300 meters above the water table (i.e., above the saturated zone).

The current design for the potential repository calls for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste to travel to Yucca Mountain by truck or rail in shielded shipping containers. DOE has done only preliminary transportation studies, explicitly avoiding more detailed planning until after the site recommendation, which occurred in 2002. Once these materials arrive at the repository, they would be removed from the shipping containers and placed in double-layered, corrosion-resistant packages for disposal. The design lifetime of the disposal containers is required to be at least 1,000 years, and the current design utilizes an alloy (C-22) estimated to be corrosion resistant for at least 10,000 years. Rail cars would carry the canisters underground into the repository, and remotely controlled equipment would place the canisters on supports in drifts (side tunnels) off of a main underground tunnel. DOE is still exploring whether the plan should include backfilling the tunnels or ventilation should be maintained to keep the packages dry, and whether to keep the repository “hot” or “cold” (i.e., above or below the boiling point of water).

An 8-kilometer-long tunnel called the Exploratory Studies Facility has been bored through the mountain at the depth where a repository would be constructed. Several tests continue at the site to gather data on water flow through the medium, on the behavior of the rock when it is heated (as it would be by the waste), and on other unresolved technical questions.

Under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the law governing disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste, the first HLW repository in the United State will be allowed to accept no more than 70,000 MTHM of spent nuclear fuel and HLW until a second HLW repository is in operation. DOE has allocated space for 63,000 MTHM of commercial spent fuel and for 7,000 MTHM equivalent of DOE HLW and spent fuel. The 70,000 MTHM limit is not a technical capacity limit but a legislated limit.

Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Page 31
Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Page 32
Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Page 33
Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Page 34
Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Page 35
Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Page 36
Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Page 37
Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Page 38
Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Page 39
Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Page 40
Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Page 41
Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Page 42
Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Page 43
Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Page 44
Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Page 45
Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Page 46
Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Page 47
Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Page 48
Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Page 49
Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Page 50
Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Page 51
Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Page 52
Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Page 53
Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Page 54
Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Page 55
Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Page 56
Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Page 57
Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Page 58
Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Page 59
Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Page 60
Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Page 61
Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Page 62
Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Page 63
Suggested Citation:"2 Spent Nuclear Fuel and End Points, 31 ." National Research Council. 2003. End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10667.
×
Page 64
Next: 3 High-Level Radioactive Waste, 65 »
End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States Get This Book
×
Buy Paperback | $50.00 Buy Ebook | $39.99
MyNAP members save 10% online.
Login or Register to save!
Download Free PDF

End Points for spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russian and the United States provides an analysis of the management of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste in Russia and the United States, describing inventories, comparing approaches, and assessing the end-point options for storage and disposal of materials and wastes. The authoring committee finds that despite differences in philosophy about nuclear fuel cycles, Russia and the United States need similar kinds of facilities and face similar challenges, although in Russia many of the problems are worse and funding is less available. This book contains recommendations for immediate and near-term actions, for example, protecting and stabilizing materials that are security and safety hazards, actions for the longer term, such as developing more interim storage capacity and studying effects of deep injection, and areas for collaboration.

  1. ×

    Welcome to OpenBook!

    You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website.

    Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features?

    No Thanks Take a Tour »
  2. ×

    Show this book's table of contents, where you can jump to any chapter by name.

    « Back Next »
  3. ×

    ...or use these buttons to go back to the previous chapter or skip to the next one.

    « Back Next »
  4. ×

    Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book.

    « Back Next »
  5. ×

    Switch between the Original Pages, where you can read the report as it appeared in print, and Text Pages for the web version, where you can highlight and search the text.

    « Back Next »
  6. ×

    To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter.

    « Back Next »
  7. ×

    Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email.

    « Back Next »
  8. ×

    View our suggested citation for this chapter.

    « Back Next »
  9. ×

    Ready to take your reading offline? Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available.

    « Back Next »
Stay Connected!