One of the significant issues yet to be resolved for using
burnup credit ~BUC! for spent nuclear fuel ~SNF! is establishing
a set of depletion parameters that produce an adequately conservative
representation of the fuel’s isotopic inventory. Depletion
parameters ~such as local power, fuel temperature, moderator temperature,
burnable poison rod history, and soluble boron concentration!
affect the isotopic inventory of fuel that is depleted in a
pressurized water reactor ~PWR!. However, obtaining the detailed
Criticality safety analysis devoted to spent-fuel storage and transportation has to be conservative in order to be sure no accident will ever happen. In the spent-fuel storage field, the assumption of freshness has been used to achieve the conservative aspect of criticality safety procedures. Nevertheless, after being irradiated in a reactor core, the fuel elements have obviously lost part of their original reactivity. The concept of taking into account this reactivity loss in criticality safety analysis is known as burnup credit.
The effect of fixed absorbers on the reactivity of pressurized water reactor (PWR) spent nuclear fuel (SNF) in support of burnup-credit criticality safety analyses is examined. A fuel assembly burned in conjunction with fixed absorbers may have a higher reactivity for a given burnup than an assembly that has not used fixed absorbers. As a result, guidance on burnup credit, issued by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Spent Fuel Project Office, recommends restricting the use of burnup credit to assemblies that have not used burnable absorbers.
This report presents a best-estimate probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) to quantify the frequency of criticality accidents during railroad transportation of spent nuclear fuel casks. The assessment is of sufficient detail to enable full scrutiny of the model logic and the basis for each quantitative parameter contributing to criticality accident scenario frequencies. The report takes into account the results of a 2007 peer review of the initial version of this probabilistic risk assessment, which was published as EPRI Technical Report 1013449 in December 2006.
With the first 100 days of the Obama Administration behind us, the Institute for 21st Century Energy presents
this nuclear waste policy document that recounts the history of the country’s nuclear waste policy, discusses
the mechanics of the issue, and off ers specifi c recommendations to the Obama Administration and the
U.S. Congress.
Two weeks aft er the 2008 presidential election, the Institute released dozens of energy policy recommendations for
the incoming administration and 111th Congress. Ten recommendations focused on committing to and expanding
Dedicated-site interim storage of high-level reprocessed nuclear waste and of spent fuel rods is proposed as a long-term integral part of the systems approach of the national nuclear waste isolation program. Separation of interim sites for retrievable storage from permanent-disposal repositories should enhance ensurance of the performance of the latter; maintenance of retrievability at separate sites also has many advantages in both safety and possible use of waste as resources.
The West Cumbria Managing Radioactive Waste Safely (MRWS) Partnership was set up
to consider the issues that would be involved in taking part in a search to see if there is
anywhere in the Allerdale and/or Copeland areas suitable for a repository for higher activity
radioactive waste.
Over the last three years we have looked at reports and literature, heard from experts in the
field, commissioned independent research and invited reviews by independent experts.
We have placed a high priority on public and stakeholder engagement (PSE), carrying out
With the continuing accumulation of spent fuel at reactor sites, the demand for additional storage of spent fuel at AFR (away from reactor) facilities is growing. It is an issue for most Member States generating nuclear power, including those countries pursuing reprocessing. There are a diversity of technical options and services available which offer competitive, reliable solutions to meet the storage requirements. In particular, dry storage technologies have been widely applied.
The aim of the Forum’s first workshop was to establish contacts amongst Forum participants and
to lay the basis of its future programme and methods of work. In order to give guidance to the FSC
and, at the same time, to give this initiative high-level input and visibility, the workshop was preceded
by a half-day inaugural event. Members of the NEA Radioactive Waste Management Committee and
invited speakers provided their perspectives in the area of stakeholder confidence. Over the following
The context of long-term radioactive waste management is being shaped
by changes in modern society. Values such as health, environmental protection
and safety are increasingly important, as are trends towards improved forms of
participatory democracy that demand new forms of risk governance in dealing
with hazardous activities. These changes in turn necessitate new forms of
dialogue and decision-making processes that include a large number of
stakeholders. The new dynamic of dialogue and decision-making process has
The structure of this National Report complies, to the greatest adjustment possible, with the
Guidelines Regarding the Form and Structure of National Reports approved in the
Preparatory Meeting held in Vienna in December 2001.
Section A includes a general introduction to the report, and a reference to the National
Program which contemplates spent fuel and radioactive waste management and the treatment
of wastes that originate from Mining and Uranium Processing.
The U.S. industry’s limited efforts at licensing transportation packages characterized as “highcapacity,”
or containing “high-burnup” (>45 GWd/MTU) commercial spent nuclear fuel
(CSNF), or both, have not been successful considering existing spent-fuel inventories that will
have to be eventually transported. A holistic framework is proposed for resolving several CSNF
transportation issues. The framework considers transportation risks, spent-fuel and cask-design
This report presents results from a parametric study of equilibrium fuel cycle costs for a closed fuel cycle with multi-recycling of plutonium in fast reactors (FRs) compared to an open, once-through fuel cycle using PWRs. The study examines the impact on fuel cycle costs from changes in the unit costs of uranium, advanced PUREX reprocessing of discharged uranium dioxide (UO2) fuel and fast-reactor mixed-oxide (FR-MOX) fuel, and FR-MOX fuel fabrication.
Within the context of long-term waste management and sustainable nuclear fuel supply, there continue to be discussions regarding whether the United States should consider recycling of light-water reactor (LWR) spent nuclear fuel (SNF) for the current fleet of U.S. LWRs. This report presents a parametric study of equilibrium fuel cycle costs for an open fuel cycle without plutonium recycling (once-through) and with plutonium recycling (single-recycling using mixed-oxide, or MOX, fuel), assuming an all-pressurized water reactor (PWR) fleet.
The effective termination of the Yucca Mountain program by the U.S. Administration in 2009
has left the U.S. program for management of used fuel and high level radioactive waste (HLW)
in a state of uncertainty. In concert with this major policy reset and in response to the resulting
policy vacuum, the President directed the Energy Secretary to establish the Blue Ribbon
Commission on America’s Nuclear Future (BRC) “…to conduct a comprehensive review of
policies for managing the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle and to provide recommendations for
The effective termination of the Yucca Mountain program by the U.S. Administration in 2009 has further delayed the construction and operation of a permanent disposal facility for used fuel and high level radioactive waste (HLW) in the United States. In concert with this decision, the President directed the Energy Secretary to establish the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future to review and provide recommendations on options for managing used fuel and HLW.
This report presents the results of a dynamic simulation analysis for deployment of advanced light water reactors (LWRs) and fast burner reactors, as proposed by the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) program. Conditions for the analysis were selected for their potential to challenge the nuclear fuel simulation codes that were used, due to the large variations in nuclear fuel composition for the burner reactors before equilibrium conditions are approached. The analysis was performed in a U.S.
