Packaging Strategies for Criticality Safety for "Other" DOE Fuels in a Repository

Since 1998, there has been an ongoing effort to gain acceptance of U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)-owned spent nuclear fuel (SNF) in the national repository. To accomplish this goal, the fuel matrix was used as a discriminating feature to segregate fuels into nine distinct groups. From each of those groups, a characteristic fuel was selected and analyzed for criticality safety based on a proposed packaging strategy. This report identifies and quantifies the important criticality parameters for the canisterized fuels within each criticality group to: (1) demonstrate how the “other” fuels in the group are bounded by the baseline calculations or (2) allow identification of individual type fuels that might require special analysis and packaging.