Spent Fuel Project Office Interim Staff Guidance - 8

Spent Fuel Project Office, Interim Staff Guidance - 8, Revision 1

This research examines the practice of equating the reactivity of spent fuel to that of fresh fuel for the purpose of performing burnup credit criticality safety analyses for PWR spent fuel pool (SFP) storage conditions. The investigation consists of comparing kf estimates based on reactivity "equivalent" fresh fuel enrichment (REFFE) to kl estimates using the actual spent fuel isotopics.

STARBUCS is a new prototypic analysis sequence for performing automated criticality safety analyses of spent fuel systems employing burnup credit. A depletion analysis calculation for each of the burnup-dependent regions of a spent fuel assembly, or other system containing spent fuel, is performed using the ORIGEN-ARP sequence of SCALE. The spent fuel compositions are then used to generate resonance self-shielded cross sections for each region of the problem, which are applied in a three-dimensional criticality safety calculation using the KENO V.a code.

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

At the request of the staff to the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future (“BRC”), we have reviewed whether certain recommendations in the BRC’s July 29, 2011 Draft Report respecting near-term actions by the Department of Energy (“DOE”) or other officers or agencies in the Executive Branch can be implemented under existing law. These recommendations relate to:
(1) Initial steps to site, license and construct consolidated interim storage facilities for spent nuclear fuel (“spent fuel”);

This Memorandum analyzes issues related to the Standard Contract between the U.S. Department of Energy (“DOE”) and the “utilities.” Beginning with a discussion of specific provisions of the Standard Contract, this Memorandum then analyzes the status of lawsuits involving the Standard Contract, reviews issues related to on-site storage of spent fuel and HLW, and assesses the prospects for modifying the current waste-disposal regime through Federal legislation or amendments to the Standard Contract.

This memo sets forth the Office of Standard Contract Management's current estimate of the US Government's liability in connection with the Government's partial breach of the "standard contracts" that it executed pursuant to the NWPA of 1982. The Office of Standard Contract Management estimates that liability, as of today and based on the analysis and qualifications set forth below, to be $15.4 billion.
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This report has been prepared to qualitatively assess the amount of burnup credit (reactivity margin) provided by ISG-8 compared to that provided by the burnup credit methodology developed and currently applied in France. For the purposes of this study, the methods proposed in the DOE Topical Report have been applied to the ISG-8 framework since this methodology (or one similar to it) is likely to form the basis of initial cask licensing applications employing limited burnup credit in the United States.