Management of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste consists of three main phases – storage, transportation, and disposal – commonly referred to as the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle. Current practice for commercial spent nuclear fuel management in the United States (US) includes temporary storage of spent fuel in both pools and dry storage systems at operating or shutdown nuclear power plants. Storage pools are filling 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 spent fuel from pools into dry storage. Unless a repository becomes available that can accept spent fuel for permanent disposal, projections indicate that the US will have approximately 136,000 metric tons of spent fuel in dry storage systems by mid-century, when the last plants in the current reactor fleet are decommissioned. Current designs for dry storage systems rely on large multi-assembly canisters, the most common of which are so-called “dual-purpose canisters” (DPCs). DPCs are certified for both storage and transportation, but are not designed or licensed for permanent disposal. The large capacity (greater number of spent fuel assemblies) of these canisters can lead to higher canister temperatures, which can delay transportation and/or complicate disposal. This current management practice, in which the utilities continue loading an ever-increasing inventory of larger DPCs, does not emphasize integration among storage, transportation, and disposal. This lack of integration does not cause safety issues, but it does lead to a suboptimal system that increases costs, complicates storage and transportation operations, and limits options for permanent disposal. This paper describes strategies for improving integration of management practices in the US across the entire back end of the nuclear fuel cycle. The complex interactions between storage, transportation, and disposal make a single optimal solution unlikely. However, efforts to integrate various phases of nuclear waste management can have the greatest impact if they begin promptly and continue to evolve throughout the remaining life of the current fuel cycle. A key factor that influences the path forward for integration of nuclear waste management practices is the identification of the timing and location for a repository. The most cost-effective path forward would be to open a repository by mid-century with the capability to directly dispose of DPCs without repackaging the spent fuel into disposalready canisters. Options that involve repackaging of spent fuel from DPCs into disposalready canisters or that delay the repository opening significantly beyond mid-century could add 10s of billions of dollars to the total system life cycle cost.
The U.S. study of permanent geologic disposal options of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level radioactive waste (HLW) provided a technical basis for informing policy decisions regarding strategies for the management and disposal of radioactive waste requiring geologic isolation through the evaluation of potential impacts of waste forms on the feasibility and performance of representative generic concepts for geologic disposal. The goal of the study was to help inform relevant policy questions including: Is a "one-size-fits-all" repository a good strategic option for disposal? Do different waste types and forms perform differently enough in different disposal concepts that they warrant different treatment? Do some disposal concepts perform significantly better with or without specific waste types or forms?
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.
For more than three decades, the US Department of Energy has investigated the potential for permanent disposal of high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel in a deep-mined repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada (USA). A detailed license application submitted to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2008 provides full documentation of the case for permanent disposal of nuclear waste in tuff. The aridity of the site and great depth to the water table provide a disposal environment and a design concept unique among deep-mined repositories currently or previously proposed worldwide.
The results described in this report are an analysis of nationwide surveys, administered between 2006 and 2015, which measure preferences of US residents concerning the environment and energy sources. The Energy & Environment (EE) survey series is conducted annually by the Center for Energy, Security & Society (CES&S), a joint research collaboration of the University of Oklahoma and Sandia National Laboratories. The annual EE survey series is designed to track evolving public views on nuclear materials management in the US. The 2015 wave of the Energy and Environment survey (EE15) was implemented using a web-based questionnaire, and was completed by 2,021 respondents using an Internet sample that matches the characteristics of the adult US population as estimated in the US Census. A special focus of the EE15 survey is how survey respondents understand and evaluate “consent” in the context of the storage and transportation of spent nuclear fuel (SNF). This report presents an overview of key results from analyses of questions related to consent-based siting and other elements of the nuclear energy fuel cycle.