IAEA-TECDOC Spent fuel management: Current status and prospects 1997

Transcription

1 IAEA-TECDOC-1006 Spent fuel management: Current status and prospects 1997 Proceedings

2 The IAEA does not normally maintain stocks of reports in this series. However, microfiche copies

3 The originating Section of this publication in the IAEA was: Nuclear Fuel Cycle

4 FOREWORD Spent fuel management has always been one of the important stages in the nuclear fuel cycle

5 EDITORIAL NOTE In preparing this publication for press, staff of the IAEA have made up the pages from the original manuscripts as submitted by the authors. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the IAEA, the governments of the nominating Member States or the nominating organizations. Throughout the text names of Member States are retained as they were when the text was compiled. The use of particular designations of countries or territories does not imply any judgement by the publisher, the IAEA, as to the legal status of such countries or territories, of their authorities and institutions or of the delimitation of their boundaries. The mention of names of specific companies or products (whether or not indicated as registered) does not imply any intention to infringe proprietary rights, nor should it be construed

6 SUMMARY CONTENTS

7 1. CURRENT STATUS SUMMARY OF THE ADVISORY GROUP MEETING: REVIEW AND RECOMMENDATIONS

8 In Canada two APR (on site) dry interim storage facilities have been put in operation during After one year of trial operation, the dry storage facility at Dukovany (using dual purpose CASTOR casks)

9 2. ADVISORY GROUP RECOMMENDATIONS The Advisory Group concluded from the discussions of the country presentations that the backend of the fuel cycle is a mature technology. It is recognized that new technologies for the management of spent fuel are under development and will be implemented in the future. The management

10 SPENT FUEL MANAGEMENT

11 On-site

12 TABLE

13 TABLE 1-B CANADIAN DRY SPENT FUEL STORAGE FACILITIES (Status of wet storage facilities as of August 1997) Name of Facility Whiteshell Gentilly 1 Douglas Point Chalk River Point Lepreau Gentilly 2 Pickering

14 2.0 STATUS OF SPENT FUEL STORAGE IN CANADA Spent fuel originates from research reactors, decommissioned prototype CANDU reactors

15 4

16 Transfer Flask CANSTOR Modules Storage of a Fuel Basket in a CANSTOR Module at the Storage Site Transfer Flask Transfer Flasks Shielded Work Station Fuel Basket Transfer To Storage Site Semi-Automated Basket Welding Fuel Drying and Basket Sealing in Shielded Work Station Transfer Flask on Trolley 2 Fuel Assembly Filled Fuel Basket Work Table

17 2.2 The Pickering Dry Storage Experience

18 Shield Plate Vent Port Safeguards Seal Seal/Structural Weld Fuel Modules (Total Fuel Bundles (Total 384) Drain Port

19 Because

20 SPENT FUEL MANAGEMENT

21 1.2. Progress of ongoing NPP projects

22 including

23 farther future,

24

25

26 SPENT FUEL MANAGEMENT IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC XA

27 interim storage facility. These remaining assemblies will be shipped back to the Czech Republic by the

28 CEZ nor the reprocessing option is not foreseen. Consequently the concept of fuel cycle back-end will have to assure the storage and following disposal of spent fuel. Some research described in [2] has already been started

29

30 6. CONCLUSIONS, FUTURE TASKS AND CHALLENGES Since 1995,

31 STATUS

32 2. FRENCH ENERGY POLICY The main points of the French nuclear energy policy presented in 1995 were:

33 between unloading of the fuel elements from the core and reprocessing, allowing mainly for the decrease of the irradiated fuel elements thermal power. This duration includes the necessary cooling time before transportation away from reactor. Thus, EdF has to deal with interim storage at-reactor, as every other utility, and with extended interim storage at-reactor or away from reactor. In 1995, EdF was studying the construction of a centralized interim spent fuel storage facility away from reactors. In fact, this project

34 Spent fuel reprocessing at La Hague features numerous advanced techniques, designed to recover plutonium and uranium (that have a highly energetic content, even after using the fuel at a very high burnup), and to minimize the volume and the radiotoxicity of the final waste. The recovery ratio

35 In France, transportation

36

37

38 assemblies through reprocessing,

39 higher burnups enabled the mass of fuel requiring disposal to be reduced by approximately 28% in the case of PWRs and even by around 42% in the case of BWRs. This also explains how it has been possible to achieve continual reductions in fuel cycle costs per kwh since the mid-1980s, in spite of disposal costs that continue

40 3. THE BACK-END OF FUEL CYCLE STRATEGY Fig.

41 burnup

42 4.2.

43 in

44 4.4. Tentative estimate of dry interim storage periods of SFAs with increased burnup and/or

45 Reactor Type FA-Type Burn-up Fuel Comments Gas/Graphit Graphit-Sphere U/Th from SWR 8x8 9x9 10x10 SVEA ATRIUM max. U MOX DWR WWER-2 WWER440 14x14 15X15AKA 15x15 FOCUS 16x16 FOCUS 16x16HTP 18x18 FOCUS 18x18HTP < max. U U MOX

46 kept in reserve in every nuclear power plant. On principle, onsite storage capacity may not be used for fuel from other plants. The most common spent fuel pool storage technology is the compact storage rack in Germany using borated

47 5.3. Interim spent fuel storage at AFR cask The AFR-storage in the sites of Ahaus and Gorleben is practiced in the transport and storage

48 The storage containers considered in the GEISHA-study contains the fuel from 3 spent PWR-

49 The capsule

50 interim above ground storage time periods

51 SPENT FUEL MANAGEMENT IN HUNGARY: CURRENT STATUS AND PROSPECTS

52 235. This provides

53 Hungary does

54 KEY 1 Cask Rail Transporter 2 Cask Handling Crane

55 far ' In "" investigations Interim storage and final disposal; Reprocessing. of th 7. FUTURE TASKS RELATED TO THE BACK END OF THE FUEL CYCLE The strategy for the back-end of the fuel cycle for the Hungarian Republic related to the nuclear power plant is shipping the fuel back to Russia for reprocessing under the givct^s? conditions,

56 SPENT FUEL MANAGEMENT

57 spent fuels from PHWRs. (see Table II). Based on the plutonium based fuel fabrication experience at pilot plant scale in Trombay, a sophisticated industrial scale Advanced Fuel Fabrication Facility (AFFF)

58 TABLE

59 SPENT FUEL MANAGEMENT

60 In 1994,

61

62 pools

63 Dry storage Research and development on spent fuel dry storage technology has been carried out mainly by CRIEPI under contracts with

64 in September 1977

65 JNFL applied for the authorization of reprocessing business through the STA to the Prime Minister

66 recovered plutonium

67 impact

68 SPENT FUEL MANAGEMENT IN THE REPUBLIC OF KOREA: CURRENT STATUS AND PLANS XA SANG DOUG PARK Korea Electric Power Research Institute, Daeduk Science Town, Republic of Korea Abstract Korea has selected nuclear energy as the major source for the electric power generation due to the insufficiency

69 Table 2 shows the storage capacity and the annual and cumulative spent fuel arisings as of From the table, it can be seen that soon a shortage of storage capacity will occur, if no measures are taken. TABLE 1. NUCLEAR POWER PLANT CAPACITY IN KOREA Status Plant Name In Operation Kori 1 Kori2 Wolsung 1 Kori 3 Kori 4 Yeongkwang 1 Yeongkwang 2 Uljin 1 Uljin 2 Yeongkwang 3 Yeongkwang4 Wolsung 2 Under Construction Wolsung 3 Wolsung Long-term Projection

70 3. SERIES OF EFFORTS TO INCREASE THE STORAGE CAPACITY Korea

71 close

72 Appendix DUPIC CYCLE In this process, dense

73 CURRENT STATE OF SPENT FUEL MANAGEMENT XA

74 TABLE

75

76 SPENT FUEL MANAGEMENT

77 South Africa has a National Radioactive Waste Disposal facility some 600 km north of Cape Town (100 km south east of Springbok). The facility, called Vaalputs and operated by the AEC, covers an area of about hectare measuring 16,5 km from east to west and 6,5 km from north to south. Approximately

78 storage bunker systems

79 research.

80 South Africa is also currently establishing a national radioactive waste management policy. Although provision

81 SWEDISH SPENT FUEL MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS, FACILITIES

82 2. SYSTEMS

83 Figure 2. A fuel transport cask is being loaded on board the M/S Sigyn The dry nitrogen filled cask cavity can accommodate 17 BWR or 7 PWR assemblies corresponding to 3 t of fuel. The cask is cooled by natural air convection around the cooling fins on the cask outer surface. The cooling capacity allows fuel with a burnup of MWd/tU and

84 During the last 8 summers M/S Sigyn has been used as a floating exhibition for information to the public about

85 handling machines.

86 4.1. Operating experiences

87 very long time thereafter. To remain tight the canister must sustain the mechanical and chemical environment

88 The canister will contain 12 BWR or 4 PWR fuel assemblies. The amount of fuel that can be loaded into the canister is limited by the maximum permissible temperature of the canister surface after disposal. This means that there is no advantage in consolidating the fuel assemblies. The outer diameter

89 laboratory

90

91 The Sellafield MOX Plant (SMP) is currently under construction, and is expected to be operational

92 projects, in the shorter term Plutonium is continued to be stored at Sellafield. BE will consider in due course

93 SPENT FUEL MANAGEMENT IN THE UKRAINE XA A. AFANASYEV Ukrainian State Committee on Nuclear Power Utilization, Kiev, Ukraine Abstract There are fourteen nuclear power reactors at five NPP sites in operation, representing around 40-50% of the overall electricity production. Four power reactors are under construction. Spent fuel from VVERs-440 and VVERs-1000 is stored at the reactor water pools and partially is shipped to Russia for reprocessing. Dry interim storage systems

94 TABLE I. NUCLEAR POWER PLANT CAPACITY

95 2.1. Spent Fuel Management Scheme in the Former USSR The spent fuel management concept as part of the Nuclear Energy Programme is stated in [1,2,3]. After discharge from the reactor, spent fuel assemblies (SFAs) were put into at-reactor cooling ponds where they were stored for at least three years (for RBMK spent fuel at least 1.5 year). After storage

96 The total quantity of WER-440 spent fuel assemblies shipped to RT-1 for reprocessing is Among them, 1047 fuel assemblies were shipped under

97 between ,

98 2.5. Programme of future work Goscomatom has worked out a Spent Fuel Management Programme in Ukraine up to the year of The programme considers the following issues:

99 STATUS

100 TABLE I. CERTIFIED STORAGE-ONLY TECHNOLOGIES Vendor Technology General Nuclear Systems, Inc. Castor V/21 General Nuclear Systems, Inc. Castor X/33 General Nuclear Systems, Inc. Castor X/74 Foster Wheeler MVDS Westinghouse MC-10 NAC International NAC 128 S/T Sierra Nuclear VSC-24 Transnuclear TN-24 Transnuclear TN-32 Transnuclear TN-40 VECTRA NUHOMS-7P VECTRA NUHOMS-24P VECTRA NUHOMS-52B Several commercial vendors are pursuing development of "dual-purpose" technologies, which can be used in both storage and transportation. These designs will help minimize handling of the spent fuel which will reduce exposure

101 Site TABLE III. SPENT FUEL DRY STORAGE SYSTEMS AT REACTOR SITE Robinson Oconee Calvert Cliffs Fort

102

103 Scenario: Anflotineed$llutddWi ft3tj^ r life (Assuming no acceptance of spent nuclear fuel by DOE, all shutdown reactors unloaded into dry storage) Scale 4000* Dry storage weeds y States stafces,

104 6. CENTRALIZED INTERIM STORAGE Authorization for DOE to construct an interim storage facility has either been revoked or expired without success. Legislation currently under consideration

105 The root cause of the event was the use of Carbo Zinc 11 primer to coat the inside of the VSC- 24 cask to enhance corrosion resistance. When left to interact with the borated water in the cask for an extended period of time, zinc reacted with the water to form zinc oxide, zinc hydroxide, and hydrogen, and other compounds. By the time welding commenced, sufficient hydrogen had built up in the cask under the shield lid to ignite and displace the lid.

106 Afanasyev, A.A. Balu,

107 Mineo,

108 Williams, J.R. Office