A plan to prepare doe-managed spent fuel for long-term storage, transportation and disposal

Joshua J. Jarrell, Brett W. Carlsen, Gordon Petersen, Colleen V. Shelton-Davis, Philip L. Winston

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaperpeer-review

Abstract

This paper documents a plan for preparing Department of Energy (DOE)-managed spent nuclear fuel for transportation, including the necessary steps to ensure that containers and licensing are in place to allow road-ready packaging of spent fuel at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) Site. Spent fuel is currently stored across the national laboratory complex in a variety of environments, both wet and dry. In many cases, the current storage facilities are reaching capacity (e.g., dry storage at the INL Site) and/or are being used beyond their planned lifetimes. A canister type is being proposed, termed the “DOE standardized canister,” to allow a broad range of fuels to be loaded, stored, transported, and disposed of while avoiding the need to open the loaded canister. Fundamentally, the goal is to load the fuel in a high-integrity welded canister that, with appropriate packaging and ancillary system components, is capable of performing radiological and criticality safety functions for long-term storage, eventual transportation, and final disposal. This reliance on the canister as the basis for compliance with safety requirements minimizes the need for detailed fuel-specific condition, composition, mechanical, and chemical properties, etc. It would also minimize the costs and personnel exposure associated with this characterization of the spent fuel. This paper lays out four key activities needed to ensure that DOE-managed fuel is stored in a road-ready configuration and prepared for eventual transportation. These four activities are: (1) confirmation that the DOE standardized canister design meets the needs of the DOE complex, with a specific focus on Idaho National Laboratory (INL) fuels; (2) evaluation of the current and proposed INL facilities needed to package spent fuel in DOE standardized canisters; (3) determination of the appropriate storage configuration for spent fuel; and (4) development of a transportation license application to certify a transportation package with the standardized canister as content approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

Original languageEnglish
Pages492-497
Number of pages6
StatePublished - 2019
Event17th International High-Level Radioactive Waste Management Conference, IHLRWM 2019 - Knoxville, United States
Duration: Apr 14 2019Apr 18 2019

Conference

Conference17th International High-Level Radioactive Waste Management Conference, IHLRWM 2019
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityKnoxville
Period04/14/1904/18/19

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