STR on Interim Dry Storage of Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel – An Update (ZIRAT28/IZNA 23)
Except for a few countries (Finland, Sweden, France, and possibly Canada), the timing for establishing a geologic repository has been shown to be unpredictable. Therefore, spent fuel storage will remain the last backend operation for the foreseeable future in many countries. With proper attention, the radiological impact of storage is very low, but regulatory agencies have placed a heavy burden on licensees because of concerns related to the highly negative public perception related to the presence of spent fuel storage facilities in our biological environment. Therefore, locations where spent nuclear fuel (SNF) is or will be stored and their chosen storage technologies are the subjects of much scrutiny.
The focus of this review is on the spent nuclear fuel rods, and not on the storage system components such as the casks or the canisters and their internal hardware elements. More specifically, the following topics are treated in the report:
- Update of “Back-end” issues
- Thermal creep behaviour in relation to hydride reorientation
- PWR fuel rod cladding failure due to the hydrogen migration in spent fuel
- Update on any work on storage, transportation, long term issues
- Correlation between cooling rate and hydride reorientation. In particular, the case of fast cooling when the cask containing SNF is flooded with water, from a cladding temperature of ~350°C to ~30°C, is examined.
