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

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

To advance nuclear energy to meet future energy needs, ten countries—Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Republic of South Africa, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States—have agreed on a framework for international cooperation in research for a future generation of nuclear energy systems, known as Generation IV. The figure below gives an overview of the generations of nuclear energy systems. The first generation was advanced in the 1950s and 60s in the early prototype reactors.

Utilization of burnup credit in criticality safety analysis for long-term disposal of spent
nuclear fuel allows improved design efficiency and reduced cost due to the large mass of fissile
material that will be present in the repository. Burnup-credit calculations are based on depletion
calculations that provide a conservative estimate of spent fuel contents (in terms of criticality
potential), followed by criticality calculations to assess the value of the effective neutron

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as amended (the Act), assigns the Federal Government the responsibility for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste. Section 302a of the Act authorized the Secretary to enter into contracts with the owners and generators of commercial spent nuclear fuel and or high level waste. The Standard Contract for Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuel and or High Level Radioactive Waste (Standard Contract) established the contractual mechanism for the Department's acceptance and disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high level waste.

Fundamentally, a nuclear energy system uses nuclear fission to create heat, which is then available for generating electricity or other applications, including seawater desalination, heating, and production of other fuels. The nuclear energy system as currently deployed in the United States, Figure 1, consists of a number of integrated components, beginning with the natural resources required for nuclear fuel, followed by fissioning of the fuel in reactors connected to electricity generation facilities, and ending with the disposition of all wastes, including used nuclear fuel (UNF).

The Construction Industry Research and Policy Center (CIRPC) at the University of Tennessee was awarded a contract by the Center to Protect Workers’ Rights, under their grant program with the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), to analyze injuries of employees of the U. S. Department of Energy (DOE) and their contractors’ working at DOE work sites. The injury data analyzed were injuries recorded in DOE’s Computerized Accident Incident Reporting System (CAIRS).

Over the decade since NWPA, the disposal
program's strategy, based on its interpretation of the
legislative mandate and regulatory requirements, has
sought:
• in a single large step and under a tight
schedule, to achieve the first-of-a-kind licensing
of a first-of-a-kind repository for isolating
wastes from the human environment for many
thousands of years.
• in a single large step and as rapidly as possible,
to build a full-scale repository and begin
disposing of the bulk of the nation's inventory

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

The Blue Ribbon Commission staff requested this paper cataloging innovative stakeholder involvement programs within the Department of Energy (DOE). I reviewed a variety of material on public involvement, including papers and presentations on stakeholder involvement in DOE programs, published presentations and comments to the BRC, and research reports on stakeholder and public involvement.

As part of the plutonium waste form development and down-select process, repository analyses have been conducted to evaluate the long-term performance of these forms for repository acceptance. Intact and degraded mode criticality analysis of the mixed oxide (MOX) spent fuel is presented in Volume I, while Volume II presents the evaluations of the waste form containing plutonium immobilized in a ceramic matrix.

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as amended, established a statutory basis
for managing the nation’s civilian (or commercially produced) spent nuclear
fuel. The law established a process for siting, developing, licensing, and constructing
an underground repository for the permanent disposal of that waste.
Utilities were given the primary responsibility for storing spent fuel until it is
accepted by the Department of Energy (DOE) for disposal at a repository —
originally expected to begin operating in 1998. Since then, however, the repository

At the request of the U.S. Congress, the National Academies assessed the safety and
security of spent nuclear fuel stored in pools and dry casks at commercial nuclear power
plants in the United States. The public report can be viewed on the National Academies
Press website at http://books.nap.edu/catalog/11263.html.

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

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (the Act), established a
step-by-step process for the siting of the nation's first repository for
high-level radioactive waste and spent fuel. The Act gave the Department of
Energy (DOE) the primary responsibility for conducting this siting process.
The first step in the process laid out in the Act was the development by
the DOE, with the concurrence of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), of
general guidelines to be used by the Secretary of the DOE (the Secretary) in

The purpose of this calculation is to perform a parametric study to determine the effects of fission product leaching, assembly collapse, and iron oxide loss on the reactivity of a waste package containing mixed oxide spent nuclear fuel. Previous calculations (CRWMS M&O 1998a) have shown that the criticality control features of the waste package are adequate to prevent criticality of a flooded WP for all the enrichment/burnup pairs expected for the MOX SNF.

The purpose of this design analysis is to determine the accuracy of the SAS2H module of SCALE 4.3 in predicting isotopic concentrations of spent fuel assemblies. The objective is to develop a methodology for modeling assemblies similar to those evaluated within this analysis and to establish the consistency of SAS2H predictions. The results of this analysis may then be applied to future depletion calculations using SAS2H in which no measurements are available.

Spent Fuel Project Office, Interim Staff Guidance - 8, Revision 2 - Burnup Credit in the Criticality Safety Analyses of PWR Spent Fuel in Transport
and Storage Casks

The purpose of this design analysis is to determine the accuracy of the SAS2H module of SCALE 4.3 in predicting isotopic concentrations of spent fuel assemblies. The objective is to develop a methodology for modeling assemblies similar to those evaluated within this analysis and to establish the consistency of SAS2H predictions. The results of this analysis may then be applied to future depletion calculations using SAS2H in which no measurements are available.

Dear Tim:
As we work to complete our final recommendations to the Secretary by January 29, 2012,
we have determined that our efforts would be aided by the formation of an ad hoc
subcommittee to investigate the issue of co‐mingling of defense and commercial wastes.
Specifically, the ad hoc subcommittee would review and make a recommendation to the
Commission on the issue of whether the 1985 Presidential decision to co‐mingle defense
and commercial wastes for disposal should be revisited in light of changes that have

The Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future (BRC) asked us to study whether
occupational safety and health conditions in today's U.S. nuclear industry are reasonably safe,
and if those conditions have improved since the Three Mile Island event in 1979. The BRC also
asked us to look to the future, to try to anticipate worker safety and health risks that should be
addressed by the industry, its government regulators and private watchdogs.
Over the eight weeks allotted, we performed a limited review of the literature and spoke with

Dear Mr. Frazier:
At our request, the Commission staff is in the process of assembling information on the costs and financing of the US program to manage used fuel and high-level nuclear wastes. To assist in the completion of this effort, it would be most helpful if the Department could provide the information listed int the attachment.
...

Thirty spent fuel samples obtained from boiling-water-reactor (BWR) fuel pins have been
modeled at Oak Ridge National Laboratory using the SAS2H sequence of the SCALE code system.
The SAS2H sequence uses transport methods combined with the depletion and decay capabilities
of the ORIGEN-S code to estimate the isotopic composition of fuel as a function of its burnup
history. Results of these calculations are compared with chemical assay measurements of spent fuel
inventories for each sample. Results show reasonable agreement between measured and predicted