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2 Free Energy
Published in Subhas K Sikdar, Frank Princiotta, Advances in Carbon Management Technologies, 2020
Disposal of the spent fuel itself is still an open question in the U.S. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act designated deep geological disposal as the method for the disposal of spent fuel. Yucca Mountain was designated as the disposal site, pending evaluation and licensing. The site is located in Nevada, about 25 miles from Death Valley and 90 miles from Las Vegas. Due to opposition from the State and public opposed to having Nevada become the site for the nation’s spent fuel disposal site, the process is stalled for lack of Congressional funding. Spent fuel is currently stored onsite at both operating reactors and those that have been decommissioned. For operating reactors, some of the fuel is stored in pools until it’s cool enough to be placed in canisters and removed to dry storage. In the case of decommissioned reactors, the fuel is sufficiently cool so that it can be stored onsite in dry cask storage facility. As of this writing, the U.S. Congress has no plans to move forward with funding of Yucca Mountain as required by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
Uranium Enrichment, Nuclear Fuels, and Fuel Cycles
Published in Robert E. Masterson, Nuclear Engineering Fundamentals, 2017
In these facilities, the fuel is now “cold” enough to be cooled by air alone, and the fuel is usually stored in dry storage casks prior to being sent to its ultimate disposal site. Hence, dry fuel storage facilities are usually intended to store the spent fuel on an interim basis until it can be disposed of or recycled. Examples of two different types of storage facilities are shown in Figure 10.37. There are many variants on these basic designs. The picture on the left is a picture of a low-level waste storage pit at the Nevada National Security Site, which is operated by the U.S. Department of Energy. The picture on the right is a picture of the dry storage facility for the Connecticut Yankee nuclear power plant, which is located in the state of Connecticut in the northeastern United States. Dry cask storage facilities are temporarily used to store high-level nuclear waste (HLW). We will explore the differences between high-level (HLW) and low-level nuclear wastes (LLW) in Section 10.37.
The Environment Today
Published in Anco S. Blazev, Power Generation and the Environment, 2021
Dry spent fuel storage, or dry cask storage, is used to store high-level radioactive waste, such as spent nuclear fuel that has already been cooled in the spent fuel pool for at least one year. The casks are steel cylinders that are either welded or bolted closed.
From “Inherently Safe” to “Proliferation Resistant”: New Perspectives on Reactor Designs
Published in Nuclear Technology, 2021
The same flexibility that allows this design to offer new approaches to spent fuel and other radioactive waste treatment (rather than dry-cask storage or deep geological repositories), then, also makes these kinds of reactors an increased proliferation risk. Malicious acts at both state and nonstate levels are not only easily imagined but seem to require intense additional security efforts. For example, before Russia’s second fast reactor at Beloyarsk, the BN-800, became operational, occasional shutdowns of the first one (the BN-600) led to security concerns among the facility’s international partners who sent their spent nuclear fuel there to have it “burned.” Without a backup, the spent nuclear fuel, containing significant amounts of plutonium, in these instances was sitting in a rather unprotected state at the site waiting for the reactor to restart.yPersonal conversation by the author with a French representative during a conference in Obninsk, Russia, in about 2006. To summarize, fast reactors are more flexible, but also more vulnerable in terms of proliferation than conventional LWRs (Ref. 36).