How to dispose of highly radioactive wastes from commercial nuclear power plants is a question that has remained unresolved in the face of rapidly changing technological, economic, and political requirements. In the three decades following World War II, two federal agencies--the Atomic Energy Commission and the Energy Research and Development Administration--tried unsuccessfully to develop a satisfactory plan for managing high level wastes.

Recognizing that Idaho has a major strategic and economic interest in maintaining INL’s leadership role and in helping
the nuclear energy industry successfully meet these broader challenges, Idaho governor C.L. “Butch” Otter established
the Leadership in Nuclear Energy or “LINE” Commission in February 2012.

The Governor recognized that recent national developments in the nuclear energy sector will cause the State of Idaho to
face important choices in the future and that he needed to understand the best options available.

The so-called nuclear renaissance has increased worldwide interest in nuclear power.
This potential growth also has increased, in some quarters, concern that nonproliferation
considerations are not being given sufficient attention. In particular, since the introduction of
many new power reactors will lead to requiring an increase in uranium enrichment services to
provide the reactor fuel, the proliferation risk of adding enrichment facilities in countries that do

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.

The success of the Civilian Radioactive Waste Management Program of the U.S.
Department of Energy (DOE) is critical to U.S. ability to manage and dispose of
nuclear waste safely--and to the reestablishment of confidence in the nuclear energy
option in the United States. The program must conform with all applicable standards
and, in fact, set the example for a national policy on the safe disposal of radioactive
waste.
The Secretary of Energy has recently completed an extensive review of the

This report summarizes the results of EPA's review of the AEC
draft environmental statement, "Management of Commercial High-Level
and Transuranium-Contaminated Radioactive Waste" (WASH-1539). The
means by which high-level and long-lived radioactive wastes are
managed constitutes one of the most important questions upon which
the public acceptability of nuclear power, with its social and economic
benefits, will be determined. While the generation of power by
nuclear means offers certain benefits from the environmental viewpoint,

Analytical methods, described in this report, are used to
systematically determine experimental fuel sub-batch
reactivities as a function of burnup. Fuel sub-batch reactivities
are inferred using more than 600 in-core pressurized water
reactor (PWR) flux maps taken during 44 cycles of operation
at the Catawba and McGuire nuclear power plants. The
analytical methods systematically search for fuel sub-batch
reactivities that minimize differences between measured and
computed reaction rates, using Studsvik Scandpower’s