Presentation made at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) Extended Storage Collaboration Project (ESCP) meeting November 2016 discussing the status of nondestructive examinations being performed on high burnup (HBU) sent nuclear fuel (SNF) rods at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and proposed destructive examinations that will be performed over the next several years.

The purpose of this calculation is to perform waste-form specific nuclear criticality safety calculations to aid in establishing criticality safety design criteria, and to identify design and process parameters that are potentially important to the criticality safety of Department of Energy (DOE) standardized Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF) canisters.

The recent experiments conducted by Argonne National Laboratory on high burnup fuel cladding material property show that the ductile to brittle transition temperature of high burnup fuel cladding is dependent on: (1) cladding material, (2) irradiation conditions, and (3) drying-storage histories (stress at maximum temperature) [1]. The experiment results also show that the ductile to brittle temperature increases as the fuel burnup increases.

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

Presented at the NEI Used Fuel Management Conference, St. Petersburg, FL, May 7-9, 2013

This report investigates trends in the radiological decay properties and changes in relative nuclide importance associated with increasing enrichments and burnup for spent LWR fuel as they affect the areas of criticality safety, thermal analysis (decay heat), and shielding analysis of spent fuel transport and storage casks. To facilitate identifying the changes in the spent fuel compositions that most directly impact these application areas, the dominant nuclides in each area have been identified and ranked by importance.

The waste forms under consideration for disposal in the repository at Yucca Mountain contain scores of radionuclides. It would be impractical and highly inefficient to model all of these radionuclides in a total system performance assessment (TSPA). Thus, the purpose of this radionuclide screening analysis is to remove from further consideration (screen out) radionuclides that are unlikely to significantly contribute to radiation dose to the public from a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.

Presented at the NEI Used Fuel Management Conference, St. Petersburg, FL, May 7-9, 2013

The purpose of this calculation is to demonstrate that the preclosure performance objectives specified in 10 CFR 63.111(a) and 10 CFR 63.111(b) (Reference 2.2.1) have been met for the proposed design and operations in the geologic repository operations area (GROA) during normal operations and Category 1 event sequences, and following Category 2 event sequences. Category 1 event sequences are those natural and human-induced event sequences that are expected to occur one or more times before permanent closure of the repository.

Presented at the NEI Used Fuel Management Conference, St. Petersburg, FL, May 7-9, 2013

This design calculation revises and updates the previous criticality evaluation for the canister handling, transfer and staging operations to be performed in the Canister Handling Facility (CHF) documented in BSC (Bechtel SAIC Company) 2004 (DIRS 167614).

The purpose of this calculation is to perform waste-form specific nuclear criticality safety calculations to aid in establishing criticality safety design criteria, and to identify design and process parameters that are potentially important to the criticality safety of the transportation, aging and disposal (TAD) canister-based systems.