Hanford Site existing irradiated fuel storage facilities description

Currently, the probabilistic risk assessments (PRA) for the nuclear power plant (NPP) sites are primarily focused on the reactor counterpart. However, evoked by the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi accident, it has been widely recognized that a complete site risk profile should not be confined to the reactor units, but should cover all the radiological sources in a site, e.g. spent fuel storage facilities. During the operation of the reactor units, the used fuel assemblies will be unloaded from the reactor core to the storage facilities in a continuous or periodical manner. Accident scenarios involving such facilities can occur with non-negligible frequencies and significant consequences, posing threat to public safety. Hence, the risk contributions from such scenarios should be carefully estimated and integrated into the safety goal evaluations. The spent fuel storage facilities can be categorized as two types: pool storage units and dry cask storage facilities. In the former type, spent fuel assemblies are stored in large pools inside or outside the reactor building, with the residual heat removed by natural or forced water circulation. The latter type, where air or inert gas circulation plays an important role, appear mostly as a complementary method, along with the pool storage units, to expand the plant’s storage capacity. For instance, at the Daiichi plant, there are several fuel pool units holding some fresh fuel and some used fuel, the latter awaiting for its transfer to the dry cask storage facilities on site. Note that, as well as in a joint manner, both storage facilities can be designed to serve the NPPs independently. As a fully developed method to identify potential risk in a logical and quantitative way, the framework of PRA can be generally applied to the spent fuel storage facilities with some special considerations. This paper is aimed at giving recommendations for the spent fuel storage facility PRAs, including (1) clarifying the analysis scope of risk from spent fuel storage facilities; (2) illustrating four key issues that determines such risk; (3) presenting three essential considerations when conducting PRAs to evaluate such risk. Also, this paper integrates the insights obtained from two representative case studies involving two NPP sites with different types of both fuel elements and storage facilities.

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Evaluation and Demonstration of Intrusion Detection for Spent Fuel Storage Facilities

10.2172/1617349 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Matthew R. Newell

Keyword(s):

Intrusion Detection ◽

Spent Fuel ◽

Spent Fuel Storage ◽

Fuel Storage ◽

Storage Facilities

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Fuel storage facilities for 200-MW nuclear heating reactor

Nuclear Engineering and Design ◽

10.1016/s0029-5493(99)00340-4 ◽

2000 ◽

Vol 197 (3) ◽

pp. 375-379 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Huajian Chang ◽

Junjie Liu ◽

Jinhai Wang

Keyword(s):

Nuclear Heating Reactor ◽

Fuel Storage ◽

Nuclear Heating ◽

Storage Facilities

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Transmutation Efficiency of Plutonium and Minor Actinides in PHWR

Volume 2: Fuel Cycle and High Level Waste Management; Computational Fluid Dynamics, Neutronics Methods and Coupled Codes; Student Paper Competition ◽

10.1115/icone16-48570 ◽

2008 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Nineta Balas (Ghizdeanu) ◽

Petre Ghitescu

Keyword(s):

Optimal Solution ◽

High Volume ◽

Alternative Fuel ◽

Natural Uranium ◽

Point Of View ◽

Minor Actinides ◽

Spent Fuel ◽

High Concentration ◽

Fuel Storage ◽

Irradiated Fuel

PHWRs use natural uranium as fuel and consequently the burn-up coefficient is relatively small compared to PWRs or other existing power reactors. The small burn-up coefficient results in a high volume of irradiated fuel to be disposed, with a high concentration of plutonium and minor actinides. In Romania the irradiated fuel from the existing CANDU 6 spent fuel pool is currently transferred in the Dry Intermediate Fuel Storage Facility existing at the NPP site. Partitioning and Transmutation (P&T) techniques could contribute to reduce the radioactive inventory and its associated radio-toxicity. The use for this purpose of ADS and FBR was more studied, but HWR were not. Therefore, the paper presents different theoretical possibilities to transmute/burn the Plutonium and minor actinides in two different PHWRs — CANDU and ACR, using WIMSD code. Different types of MOX alternative fuel, with variable initial Pu content are analyzed. The results present the reactivity effects along with the isotopes concentration in spent alternative fuel and determine the optimal solution for the fuel type/composition. Thus is indicated the most suitable PHWR type of reactor for possible Plutonium and minor actinides transmutation. The simulations showed that Pu content for an irradiation period of 200 days decreases from the initial value up to 11% in a CANDU reactor and 29% in an ACR. Thus ACR can reduce the plutonium inventory from MOX fuel and could be a transmutation solution. From the economic/technical point of view this analysis also provides input for a study yet to be conducted.

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