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The Need for Integrating the Back End of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle in the United States of America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2018

Evaristo J. Bonano ,
Elena A. Kalinina  and
Peter N. Swift
Evaristo J. Bonano*
Affiliation:
Advanced Nuclear Energy Programs, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA87185
Elena A. Kalinina
Affiliation:
Advanced Nuclear Energy Programs, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA87185
Peter N. Swift
Affiliation:
Advanced Nuclear Energy Programs, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA87185
*
*(Email: [email protected])

Abstract

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Current practice for commercial spent nuclear fuel management in the United States of America (US) includes storage of spent fuel in both pools and dry storage cask systems at nuclear power plants. Most storage pools are filled to their operational capacity, and management of the approximately 2,200 metric tons of spent fuel newly discharged each year requires transferring older and cooler fuel from pools into dry storage. In the absence of a repository that can accept spent fuel for permanent disposal, projections indicate that the US will have approximately 134,000 metric tons of spent fuel in dry storage by mid-century when the last plants in the current reactor fleet are decommissioned. Current designs for storage systems rely on large dual-purpose (storage and transportation) canisters that are not optimized for disposal. Various options exist in the US for improving integration of management practices across the entire back end of the nuclear fuel cycle.

Keywords

waste management
Type
Articles
Information
MRS Advances , Volume 3 , Issue 19: Scientific Basis for Nuclear Waste Management XLI , 2018 , pp. 991 - 1003
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2018

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