ANDRA Newsletter #3
ANDRA Newsletter #3
Newsletter produced by ANDRA, the French National Radioactive Waste Management Agency.
Newsletter produced by ANDRA, the French National Radioactive Waste Management Agency.
This book recounts the issues raised and the viewpoints aired at a recent symposium on
repository licensing. It summarizes the problems surrounding the setting of an
Environmental Protection Agency standard for the release of radionuclides and the
regulatory problems inherent in meeting such a standard. Symposium participants came
from a variety of federal agencies and advisory groups, state governments, public interest
groups, engineering firms, national laboratories, and foreign and international
organizations.
Performance objectives for the geologic repository operations area through permanent closure in 10 CFR 63.111 identify compliance with regulatory dose limits for workers and members of the public as a design objective. The purpose of this design calculation is to determine direct radiation dose consequences for Category 1 and 2 event sequences. It does not include worker dose assessment for recovery operations following Category 1 event sequences.
The Law of 30 December 1991 [1] confers to Andra the mission of assessing the feasibility of a repository of high-level and long-lived (HLLL) waste in a deep geological formation.
All activities which involve the use of radioactive material inevitably result in nuclear waste as a by-product of their operation. Most of the waste produced by such activities as medical diagnosis and therapy, field and laboratory research, and industrial processes is low-level radioactive waste—primarily small amounts of radioactivity in a large volume of matter.
The Disposal Subcommittee of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future has
commenced to address a set of issues, all of which bear directly on the central question: “How can the
United States go about establishing one or more disposal sites for high-level nuclear wastes in a manner
and within a timeframe that is technically, socially, economically, and politically acceptable?”
To answer this question and to develop specific recommendations and options for consideration by the
Several hundred distinct types of DOE-owned spent nuclear fuel (DSNF) may potentially be disposed in the Yucca Mountain repository. These fuel types represent many more types than can be viably individually examined for their effect on the Total System Performance Assessment for the License Application (TSPA-LA). Additionally, for most of these fuel types, there is no known direct experimental test data for the degradation and dissolution of the waste form in repository groundwaters.
The U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (Board) is tasked by the amendments to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 to independently evaluate U. S. Department of Energy (DOE) technical activities for managing and disposing of used nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. This report was prepared to inform DOE and Congress about the current state of the technical basis for extended dry storage1 of used fuel and its transportation following storage.
The main objective of this report is to identify conditions which affect public concern (either
increase or decrease) and political acceptance for developing and implementing programmes
for geologic disposal of long-lived radioactive waste. It also looks how citizens and relevant
actors can be associated in the decision making process in such a way that their input is
enriching the outcome towards a more socially robust and sustainable solution. Finally, it
aims at learning from the interaction how to optimise risk management addressing needs and
The purpose of this document is to provide waste quantity and sequencing information that serves as the design basis for commercial spent nuclear fuel (CSNF) arriving at the repository, and the information on the transportation systems that will be used to deliver this fuel. It is intended as input for waste package and repository design analyses needed to ensure that facilities are flexible enough to be capable of receiving, unloading, handling, and emplacing the amounts and types of CSNF expected for receipt under realistic bounding conditions.
This document is the main report from the safety assessment project SR-Can. The SR-Can project is a preparatory stage for the SR-Site assessment, the report that will be used in support of SKB’s application for a final repository. The purposes of the safety assessment SR-Can are the following:
1. To make a first assessment of the safety of potential KBS-3 repositories at Forsmark and Laxemar to dispose of canisters as specified in the application for the encapsulation plant.
The table is based on historical costs through 2006, which are shaded, and projected costs in the 2008 TSLCC. To convert to 2010$, multiply by 1.0586. The 2008 TSLCC assumes a single repository system capable of accepting and disposing of SNF and HLW equivalent to 122,100 Metric Tons of Heavy Metal (MTHM). This estimate includes all defense wastes currently destined for disposal at Yucca Mountain and projected discharges of SNF from commercial utilities, including the 47 nuclear power reactors that had received license extensions from the NRC as of January 2007.
This paper, prepared to aid the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future in its
deliberations, includes a discussion of the issues that would be faced in the siting, permitting and
licensing of storage and disposal facilities for the “back end” of the commercial nuclear fuel
cycle and for the Department of Energy’s (DOE) high–level radioactive waste. It discusses the
authority that could be employed by non–federal levels of government in supporting or opposing
The Disposal Criticality Analysis Methodology Topical Report prescribes an approach to the methodology for performing postclosure criticality analyses within the monitored geologic repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. An essential component of the methodology is the Configuration Generator Model for In-Package Criticality that provides a tool to evaluate the probabilities of degraded configurations achieving a critical state.