Skip to main content

Spent Nuclear Fuel: Accumulating Quantities at Commercial Reactors Present Storage and Other Challenges

The amount of spent fuel stored on-site at commercial nuclear reactors will continue to accumulate—increasing by about 2,000 metric tons per year and likely more than doubling to about 140,000 metric tons—before it can be moved off-site, because storage or disposal facilities may take decades to develop. In examining centralized storage or permanent disposal options, GAO found that new facilities may take from 15 to 40 years before they are ready to begin accepting spent fuel. Once an off-site facility is available, it will take several more decades to ship spent fuel to that facility.

SCALE-4 Analysis of Pressurized Water REactor Critical Configurations: Volume 5 - North Anna Unit 1 Cycle 5

The requirements of ANSI/ANS 8.1 specify that calculational methods for away-from-reactor
(AFR) criticality safety analyses be validated against experimental measurements. If credit for the
negative reactivity of the depleted (or spent) fuel isotopics is desired, it is necessary to benchmark
computational methods against spent fuel critical configurations. This report summarizes a portion
of the ongoing effort to benchmark AFR criticality analysis methods using selected critical
configurations from commercial pressurized-water reactors (PWR).

FEDERAL COMMITMENTS REGARDING USED FUEL AND HIGH-LEVEL WASTES

At the request of the Blue Ribbon Commission Staff,1 Van Ness Feldman examined the following question: What commitments has the Federal Government made to states, communities, private companies, and others related to the disposal of used fuel and high-level wastes? Spent nuclear fuel (referred to herein as “used fuel”) and high-level radioactive waste (“HLW”) are the by-products of commercial nuclear energy generation, defense production of nuclear weapons materials, and research and medical activities that utilize nuclear reactors or fission product nuclides. This paper describes the Federal

Alternative Means of Financing and Managing the Civilian Radioactive Waste Management Program

This report is in response to the directive of the House Appropriations Subcommittee for Energy and Water
Development that the Department of Energy (DOE) update a 1984 report of alternative means of financing and
managing (AMFM) the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) in the DOE. The
President’s FY 2002 budget also stated: “DOE will submit to Congress an updated report regarding alternative
approaches to finance and manage the program by June 30, 2001[.] DOE will identify in this report models of

OCRWM National Transportation Plan DOE/RW-0603 Revision 0

This Plan outlines the Department of Energy’s (DOE) 2009 strategy and planning for developing and implementing the transportation system required to transport spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level radioactive waste (HLW) from where the material is generated or stored to the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. As such, it is a historical document that reflected the DOE's thinking and/or approach in 2009.

Waste Acceptance System Requirements Document, Revision 5, ICN 01

The purpose of this document is to establish waste acceptance technical requirements for the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Civilian Radioactive Waste Management System (CRWMS). These requirements and functions consist of two types: (a) internal CRWMS requirements derived from the Civilian Radioactive Waste Management System Requirements Document (CRD) (DOE 2007a) as illustrated in Figure 1, and (b) acceptance criteria imposed by the CRWMS on spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level waste (HLW) delivered into the CRWMS.

Disclaimer: Note that this page contains links to external sites. When leaving the CURIE site, please note that the U.S. Department of Energy and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory do not control or endorse the content or ads on these sites.