This “Technical Evaluation Report on the Content of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Yucca Mountain License Application; Postclosure Volume: Repository Safety After Permanent Closure” (TER Postclosure Volume) presents information on the NRC staff’s review of DOE’s Safety Analysis Report (SAR), provided on June 3, 2008, as updated by DOE on February 19, 2009. The NRC staff also reviewed information DOE provided in response to NRC staff’s requests for additional information and other information that DOE provided related to the SAR.

The main question before the Transportation and Storage Subcommittee was whether the United States
should change its approach to storing and transporting spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level
radioactive waste (HLW) while one or more permanent disposal facilities are established.
To answer this question and to develop specific recommendations and options for consideration by the
full Commission, the Subcommittee held multiple meetings and deliberative sessions, visited several

Following the proposals for nuclear fuel assurance of International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) Director General Mohamed El Baradei, former Russian President Vladimir V.
Putin, and U.S. President George W. Bush, joint committees of the Russian Academy of
Sciences (RAS) and the U.S. National Academies (NAS) were formed to address these and other
fuel assurance concepts and their links to nonproliferation goals. The joint committees also
addressed many technology issues relating to the fuel assurance concepts. This report provides

The purpose of this study is to analyze the costs and risks associated with transporting spent fuel by barge. The barge movements would be made in combination with rail movements to transport spent fuel from plants to a repository. For the purposes of this analysis, three candidate repository sites are analyzed: Yucca Mountain, Nevada, Deaf Smith, Texas, and Hanford, Washington. This report complements a report prepared by Sandia National Laboratories in 1984 that analyzes the costs and risks of transporting spent
fuel by rail and by truck to nine candidate repository sites.

The objective of this siting study work is to support DOE in evaluating integrated advanced nuclear plant and ISFSI deployment options in the future. This study looks at several nuclear power plant growth scenarios that consider the locations of existing and planned commercial nuclear power plants integrated with the establishment of consolidated interim spent fuel storage installations (ISFSIs).

NRC Waste Confidence Rulemaking, Federal Register, 1984, 1990, 1999, and 2008

To organize its investigation of whether changes are needed in the nation’s current approach to storing and eventually transporting spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level waste (HLW), the Subcommittee began by asking a series of related questions:
• What role should storage play in an integrated U.S. waste management system and strategy in the future?

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is responsible for issuing regulations for the
packaging of spent fuel (and other large quantities of radioactive material) for transport that
provide for public health and safety during transport (Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations
(10 CFR) Part 71, “Packaging and Transportation of Radioactive Waste,” dated
January 26, 2004). In September 1977, the NRC published NUREG-0170, “Final Environmental
Statement on the Transportation of Radioactive Material by Air and Other Modes,” which

The Industry Spent Fuel Storage Handbook (“the Handbook”) addresses the relevant aspects of at-reactor spent (or used) nuclear fuel (SNF) storage in the United States. With the prospect of SNF being stored at reactor sites for the foreseeable future, it is expected that all U.S. nuclear power plants will have to implement at-reactor dry storage by 2025 or shortly thereafter. The Handbook provides a broad overview of recent developments for storing SNF at U.S. reactor sites, focusing primarily on at-reactor dry storage of SNF.

The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) convened a workshop of over 40 representatives of the nuclear industry, federal government, national laboratories, and suppliers of used-fuel dry-storage systems to discuss the potential issues associated with extended dry storage of used fuel, that is, storage considerably beyond the term of current and recently proposed U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regulations. The workshop was held November 18-19, 2009, at EPRI's offices in Washington, DC.

Spent nuclear fuel comprises a fraction of the hazardous materials packages shipped annually in the United States. In fact, at the present time, fewer than 100 packages of spent nuclear fuel are shipped annually. At the onset of spent fuel shipments to the proposed Yucca Mountain, Nevada, repository, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) expects to ship 400 - 500 spent fuel transport casks per year over the life of the facility.

In the existing U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regulations governing the spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, the time period of compliance was set at 10,000 years. Recently, a Court ordered that EPA and NRC either revise the regulation on this topic to be "based upon and consistent with" recommendations made by a panel of the National Academy of Sciences, who recommended a time period of compliance out to as long as one million years, or seek congressional relief.

In May 2003, The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) formed a Committee on Transportation of Radioactive Waste (NAS Committee) to examine the transportation of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level radioactive waste (HLW) in the United States. The focus of this study was on the transportation of SNF in the United States.

Following the massive earthquake and resulting tsunami damage in March of 2011 at the Fukushima
Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, interest was amplified for what was done for recovery at the Three
Mile Island Unit 2 (TMI-2) in the United States following its meltdown in 1979. Many parallels could be
drawn between to two accidents. This paper presents the results of research done into the TMI-2 recovery
effort and its applicability to the Fukushima Daiichi cleanup. This research focused on three topics:

This Plan outlines the Department of Energy’s (DOE) current strategy and planning for
developing and implementing the transportation system required to transport spent nuclear fuel
(SNF) and high-level radioactive waste (HLW) from where the material is generated or stored to
the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The Plan describes how DOE’s Office of
Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) intends to develop and implement a safe,
secure and efficient transportation system and how stakeholder collaboration will contribute to

This document provides specifications for selected system components of the Transportation, Aging and Disposal (TAD) canister-based system. A list of system specified components and ancillary components are included in Section
1.2.

The Department of Energy (DOE) is studying a site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, for a
permanent underground repository for highly radioactive spent fuel from nuclear reactors,
but delays have pushed back the facility’s opening date to 2010 at the earliest. In the
meantime, spent fuel is accumulating at U.S. nuclear plant sites at the rate of about 2,000
metric tons per year. Major options for managing those growing quantities of nuclear spent
fuel include continued storage at reactors, construction of a DOE interim storage site near

Presented at WM'03 Conference, Tucson, AZ, February 23-27, 2003

The purpose of this document is to provide the requirements rationale for the current version of the Preliminary Transportation, Aging and Disposal Canister System Performance Specification; WMO-TADCS-000001.

This paper provides a brief description of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and its regulatory process for the current nuclear fuel cycle for light water power reactors (LWRs). It focuses on the regulatory framework for the licensing of facilities in the fuel cycle. The first part of the paper provides an overview of the NRC and its regulatory program including a description of its organization, function, authority, and responsibilities.

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA), as amended, assigned the Department of
Energy (DOE) responsibility for developing and managing a Federal system for the disposal of
spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level radioactive waste (HLW). The Office of Civilian
Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) is responsible for accepting, transporting, and
disposing of SNF and HLW at the Yucca Mountain repository (if licensed) in a manner that
protects public health, safety, and the environment; enhances national and energy security; and

The purpose of the Foreign Research Reactor (FRR) Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF) Shipments Institutional Program was to meet the goals and commitments of the Implementation Strategy Plan for the FRR SNF Shipments. This program provided a systematic approach to planning, implementing, evaluating, and validating preparedness for the first west coast shipment of SNF from Asian countries to the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL).