The Strategy for the Management and Disposal of Used Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste is a framework for moving toward a sustainable program to deploy an integrated system capable of transporting, storing, and disposing of used nuclear fuel1 and high-level radioactive waste from civilian nuclear power generation, defense, national security and other activities.
This written testimony before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee discusses the storage and transportation of spent nuclear fuel. This entry has a PDF printout of the <a href="http://www.energy.gov/articles/secretary-moniz-s-written-testimony-sena… webpage</a>.
Under Task Order 17 of the industry Advisory and Assistance Contract to the Department of
Energy (DOE) DE-NE0000291, the AREVA Team has provided a conceptual design for a
reusable transportation cask (the 6625B-HB) capable of transporting BWR and PWR used
nuclear fuel (UNF) assemblies, including high burnup UNF. These assemblies can be shipped
either as bare fuel or fuel loaded into damaged fuel canisters (DFCs). The 6625B-HB cask has
been designed with reasonable assurance it can be licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory
Per the requirements of the Task Order 17: Spent Nuclear Fuel Transportation Cask Design
Study, statement of work (SOW), EnergySolutions and its team partners: NAC International,
Talisman International, Booz Allen Hamilton and Exelon Nuclear Partners, hereafter referred to
as “the Team”, is providing a final report for U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) review, which
documents the cask concepts developed under this study and the results of supporting analysis
work.
On July 17, 2003, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) completed the movement of 125 commercial spent nuclear fuel (SNF) assemblies from the West Valley Demonstration Project (WVDP) to the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL). The assemblies were transported by rail in two dual-purpose shipping and storage casks specifically designed for the one shipment to the INEEL and for interim storage.
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).
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.
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.
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.
