Demonstrating the Safety of Long-Term Dry Storage - 13468

Commercial nuclear plants in the United States were originally designed with the expectation that used nuclear fuel would be moved directly from the reactor pools and transported off site for either reprocessing or direct geologic disposal. However, Federal programs intended to meet this expectation were never able to develop the capability to remove used fuel from reactor sites - and these programs remain stalled to this day. Therefore, in the 1980's, with reactor pools reaching capacity limits, industry began developing dry cask storage technology to provide for additional on-site storage. Use of this technology has expanded significantly since then, and has today become a standard part of plant operations at most US nuclear sites. As this expansion was underway, Federal programs remained stalled, and it became evident that dry cask systems would be in use longer than originally envisioned. In response to this challenge, a strong technical basis supporting the long term dry storage safety has been developed. However, this is not a static situation. The technical basis must be able to address future challenges. Industry is responding to one such challenge - the increasing prevalence of high burnup (HBU) used fuel and the need to provide long term storagemore » assurance for these fuels equivalent to that which has existed for lower burnup fuels over the past 25 years. This response includes a confirmatory demonstration program designed to address the aging characteristics of HBU fuel and set a precedent for a learning approach to aging management that will have broad applicability across the used fuel storage landscape. (authors)« less