National Academies Press: OpenBook

Safety and Security of Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage: Public Report (2006)

Chapter: 1.4.4 History of Spent Fuel Storage

« Previous: 1.4.3 Spent Fuel Inventories
Suggested Citation:"1.4.4 History of Spent Fuel Storage." National Research Council. 2006. Safety and Security of Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage: Public Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11263.
×

FIGURE 1.3 Locations of spent fuel storage facilities in the United States.

TABLE 1.1 provides a listing of the 30 operating Independent Spent Fuel Storage InstalEations (ISFSIs14) in the United States. These ISFSIs include the dry storage facilities at operating and shutdown commercial power reactor sites as well as the storage facilities at the Morris and Idaho sites, as described above. The committee did not examine the Morris and Idaho facilities as part of this study. At-reactor pool storage is not considered to be an ISFSI because it operates under the power reactor license.

1.4.4 History of Spent Fuel Storage

Spent fuel pools at commercial nuclear power plants were not designed to accommodate all the fuel used during the operating lifetime of the reactors they service. Most commercial power plants were designed with small pools under the assumption that fuel would be cooled for a short period of time after discharge from the reactor and then be sent offsite for recycling (i.e., reprocessing).15 A commercial reprocessing industry never developed, however, for the reasons discussed in Appendix D. Newer power plants were designed with larger pool storage capacities. Even plants with larger-capacity pools will run out of pool space if they operate beyond their initial 40-year licenses. In 2000, the nuclear power industry projected that roughly three or four plants per year would run out of needed storage space in their pools without additional interim storage capacity (see FIGURE 1.4).

Another development that logically could reduce the demand for storage of spent nuclear fuel at the sites of power plants is the availability of a geologic repository for

14  

An ISFSI is a facility for storing spent fuel in wet pools or dry casks and is defined in Title 10, Part 72 of the Code of Federal Regulations.

15  

Residual uranium-235 and plutonium in the spent fuel would be recovered for the manufacture of new fuel. The waste products in the fuel, principally the fission products, would be immobilized in solid matrices and stored for eventual disposal.

Suggested Citation:"1.4.4 History of Spent Fuel Storage." National Research Council. 2006. Safety and Security of Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage: Public Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11263.
×

TABLE 1.1: Operating ISFSIs in the United States as of July 2004

Name

Location

Palo Verde

Arizona

Arkansas Nuclear One

Arkansas

Rancho Seco

California

San Onofre

California

Diablo Canyon

California

Fort St. Vrain 1

Colorado

Edwin L.Hatch

Georgia

DOE-INL 2

Idaho

G.E.Morris 3

Illinois

Dresden

Illinois

Duane Arnold

Iowa

Maine Yankee

Maine

Calvert Cliffs

Maryland

Big Rock Point

Michigan

Palisades

Michigan

Prairie Island

Minnesota

Yankee Rowe

Massachusetts

Oyster Creek

New Jersey

J.A.FitzPatrick

New York

McGuire

North Carolina

Davis-Besse

Ohio

Trojan

Oregon

Susquehanna

Pennsylvania

Peach Bottom

Pennsylvania

Robinson

South Carolina

Oconee

South Carolina

North Anna

Virginia

Surry

Virginia

Columbia Gen. Station

Washington

Point Beach

Wisconsin

NOTES:

1The Fort St. Vrain ISFSI stores fuel from a commercial gas-cooled reactor. The facility is operated by the Department of Energy.

2The DOE-INL facility stores fuel from the Three-Mile Island Unit 2 reactor. The facility is operated by the Department of Energy.

3The G.E.Morris ISFSI is a wet storage facility.

SOURCES: Data from the USNRC (2004).

Suggested Citation:"1.4.4 History of Spent Fuel Storage." National Research Council. 2006. Safety and Security of Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage: Public Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11263.
×

FIGURE 1.4 Projection of the number of commercial nuclear power plants that will run out of needed space in their spent fuel pools in coming years if they do not add interim storage. These data, looking only at plants that did not already use dry cask storage, were provided to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2000. SOURCE: USNRC (2001b).

disposal of spent nuclear fuel. But a nuclear waste repository is not expected to be in operation until at least 2010, and even then It will take several decades for all of the spent fuel to be shipped for disposal. Thus, onsite storage of spent fuel is likely to continue for at least several decades,

Power plant operators have made two changes in spent fuel storage procedures to increase the capacity of onsite storage. First, starting in the late 1970s, plant operators began to install high-density racks that enable more spent fuel to be stored in the pools. This has increased storage capacities in some pools by up to about a factor of five (USNRC, 2003b). Second, as noted above, many plant operators have moved older spent fuel from the pools into dry cask storage systems (see Chapter 4) or into other pools when available to make room for freshly discharged spent fuel and to maintain the capacity for a full-core offload,16

The original spent fuel racks, sometimes called “open racks,” were designed to store spent fuel in an open array, with open vertical and lateral channels between the fuel assemblies to promote water circulation. The high-density storage racks eliminated many of the channels so that the fuel assemblies could be packed closer together (FIGURE 1.5). This configuration does not allow as much water (or air circulation in loss-of-pool-cootant events) through the spent fuel assemblies as the original open-rack design.

16  

Although not required by regulation, it is standard practice in the nuclear industry to maintain enough open space in the spent fuel pool to hold the entire core of the nuclear reactor. This provides an additionsl margin of safety should the fuel have to be removed from the reactor core in an emergency or for maintenance purposes.

Suggested Citation:"1.4.4 History of Spent Fuel Storage." National Research Council. 2006. Safety and Security of Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage: Public Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11263.
×

Several nuclear utilities have already submitted license applications to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build 16 new ISFSIs, Among the potential new ISFSIs, a consortium of utilities has submitted a license for a private fuel storage facility (PFS) in Utah for interim dry storage of up to 40,000 metric tons of spent fuel.

Most or all pools store some spent fuel that has aged more than five years after discharge from the reactor, and so could be transferred to dry-cask storage. The amount that could be transferred depends on plant-specific information such as pool size and configuration, operating history of the reactor, the enrichment and burn-up level in the fuel, and availability of an ISFSI.

FIGURE 1.5 Dense spent fuel pool storage racks for BWR fuel. This cross-sectional illustration shows the principal elements of the spent fuel rack, which sits on the bottom of the pool. SOURCE: Nuclear Regulatory Commission briefing materials (2004).

Suggested Citation:"1.4.4 History of Spent Fuel Storage." National Research Council. 2006. Safety and Security of Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage: Public Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11263.
×
Page 21
Suggested Citation:"1.4.4 History of Spent Fuel Storage." National Research Council. 2006. Safety and Security of Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage: Public Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11263.
×
Page 22
Suggested Citation:"1.4.4 History of Spent Fuel Storage." National Research Council. 2006. Safety and Security of Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage: Public Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11263.
×
Page 23
Suggested Citation:"1.4.4 History of Spent Fuel Storage." National Research Council. 2006. Safety and Security of Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage: Public Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11263.
×
Page 24
Next: 2.1 BACKGROUND ON RISK »
Safety and Security of Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage: Public Report Get This Book
×
Buy Paperback | $41.00
MyNAP members save 10% online.
Login or Register to save!
Download Free PDF

In response to a request from Congress, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Homeland Security sponsored a National Academies study to assess the safety and security risks of spent nuclear fuel stored in cooling pools and dry casks at commercial nuclear power plants. The information provided in this book examines the risks of terrorist attacks using these materials for a radiological dispersal device. Safety and Security of Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel is an unclassified public summary of a more detailed classified book. The book finds that successful terrorist attacks on spent fuel pools, though difficult, are possible. A propagating fire in a pool could release large amounts of radioactive material, but rearranging spent fuel in the pool during storage and providing emergency water spray systems would reduce the likelihood of a propagating fire even under severe damage conditions. The book suggests that additional studies are needed to better understand these risks. Although dry casks have advantages over cooling pools, pools are necessary at all operating nuclear power plants to store at least the recently discharged fuel. The book explains it would be difficult for terrorists to steal enough spent fuel to construct a significant radiological dispersal device.

  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!