Current Status of the New Spent Fuel Dry Storage Facility in Romania

Author(s):  
Veronica Andrei ◽  
Florin Glodeanu ◽  
Ioan Rotaru ◽  
Ioana Daian

Abstract The Cernavoda Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), in commercial operation since 1996, produces more than 10% of the electricity produced in Romania. Recently, the Romanian Government declared its commitment for completion of a second reactor of the CANDU design, under construction on the Cernavoda site. The annual spent fuel arising from a CANDU reactor is about 100tU. The current policy for spent fuel management as practiced by the plant owner is to store it in the reactor bay for minimum six years and in a dry storage facility for a minimum of 50 years. For geological disposal of spent fuel, the “wait and see” strategy is considered the best approach, as Romania has a relative low scale nuclear program and wants to benefit by the international progress in this field. The construction of a new spent fuel dry storage facility located in the vicinity of the nuclear power reactor site represents a main priority for the next three years. The site of this facility will accommodate two nuclear units’ inventories of spent fuel for the entire planned lifetime. An international public-limited tender was organized to select the supplier of the dry storage technology in early 2001. The tenderer was asked to propose a proven and licensed technology capable of storing CANDU spent fuel according to specified design parameters and safety and environmental requirements. Design, construction, operation or licensing legal specific requirements for such a facility is generally not established and other already existing national requirements are applicable to a limited degree. Taking into account the different approaches and iterative processes required for Romanian authorities to regulate the nuclear activities for different fields, this paper considers the realistic path forward. The current status and main aspects of the development and licensing of the new nuclear facility in Romania is presented in this paper.

Author(s):  
Liming Huang ◽  
Shouhai Yang ◽  
Jie Liu

Radiation safety is an important part of safety assessment of spent fuel dry storage technology. This paper describes the radiation protection design of PWR spent fuel dry storage facility for radiation safety completed by China General Nuclear Power Corporation. Considering the special site conditions, Monte Carlo method is used to complete the precise calculation of the three-dimensional radiation dose field in the spent fuel storage building. Through the spent fuel storage module and the storage building with shielding function, radiation shielding design is completed to meet China’s regulatory requirements, which ensures radiation safety for workers and the public during the transport and storage of spent fuel. It will provide a reference for construction of spent fuel dry storage facility of CPR1000 and HPR1000.


Author(s):  
Mile Bace ◽  
Kresimir Trontl ◽  
Dubravko Pevec

Abstract The intention was to model a dry storage facility that could satisfy the needs of a medium nuclear power plant similar to the NPP Krsko. The attention has been focused on radiation dose rate analyses and criticality calculations. Using the SCALE 4.4 code package and modified QAD-CGGP code, we modeled a facility that satisfies the basic criteria for public radiation protection. The capacity of the storage is 1,400 spent fuel assemblies which is adequate for a forty years medium NPP lifetime.


Author(s):  
Masumi Wataru ◽  
Hisashi Kato ◽  
Satoshi Kudo ◽  
Naoko Oshima ◽  
Koji Wada ◽  
...  

Spent nuclear fuel coming from a Japanese nuclear power plant is stored in the interim storage facility before reprocessing. There are two types of the storage methods which are wet and dry type. In Japan, it is anticipated that the dry storage facility will increase compared with the wet type facility. The dry interim storage facility using the metal cask has been operated in Japan. In another dry storage technology, there is a concrete overpack. Especially in USA, a lot of concrete overpacks are used for the dry interim storage. In Japan, for the concrete cask, the codes of the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers and the governmental technical guidelines are prepared for the realization of the interim storage as well as the code for the metal cask. But the interim storage using the concrete overpack has not been in progress because the evaluation on the stress corrosion cracking (SCC) of the canister is not sufficient. Japanese interim storage facilities would be constructed near the seashore. The metal casks and concrete overpacks are stored in the storage building in Japan. On the other hand, in USA they are stored outside. It is necessary to remove the decay heat of the spent nuclear fuel in the cask from the storage building. Generally, the heat is removed by natural cooling in the dry storage facility. Air including the sea salt particles goes into the dry storage facility (Figure 1). Concerning the concrete overpack, air goes into the cask body and cools the canister. Air goes along the canister surface and is in contact with the surface directly. In this case, the sea salt in the air attaches to the surface and then there is the concern about the occurrence of the SCC. For the concrete overpack, the canister including the spent fuel is sealed by the welding. The loss of sealability caused by the SCC has to be avoided. To evaluate the SCC for the canister, it is necessary to make clear the amount of the sea salt particles coming into the storage building and the concentration on the canister. In present, the evaluation on that point is not sufficient. In this study, the concentration of the sea salt particles in the air and on the surface of the storage facility are measured inside and outside of the building. For the measurement, two sites of the dry storage facility using the metal cask are chosen. This data is applicable for the evaluation on the SCC of the canister to realize the interim storage using the concrete overpack.


Author(s):  
Nieves Marti´n ◽  
Manuel Rodri´guez

ENRESA is the National Spanish Agency responsible of the dismantling of Nuclear Facilities, previous Transfer of ownership of the facility from the Utility to ENRESA. On April 30th 2006, Jose´ Cabrera Nuclear Power Plant (Fig. 1) was definitively shutdown, and two years later, on April 30th 2008, ENRESA requested the transfer of the ownership of the Plant from the Ministry along with the corresponding authorization for performance of the Dismantling and Decommissioning Plan. On February 1st 2010, ENRESA was authorized to initiate the dismantling of Jose´ Cabrera NPP, once the spent fuel has been stored on-site at a dry storage facility (ISFSI). Currently, preparatory activities are underway, including the modification of systems and auxiliary facilities for waste and material management. Main challenges of the project include the removal of major components (vessel, steam generator, pressurizer, main pump and primary loop), and the use of large containers (CE-2b) to reduce segmentation of activated parts.


2009 ◽  
Vol 239 (1) ◽  
pp. 158-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yung-Yen Ko ◽  
Shang-Yi Hsu ◽  
Cheng-Hsing Chen

2006 ◽  
Vol 48 (6) ◽  
pp. 487-494 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masood Iqbal ◽  
J. Khan ◽  
Sikander M. Mirza

Author(s):  
V. Wittebolle

Abstract In Belgium 57% of the electricity is presently generated by 7 nuclear units of the PWR type located in Doel and Tihange. Their total output amounts to 5632 MWe. Part of the spent fuel unloaded from the first three units has been sent till 2000 for reprocessing in the Cogema facility at La Hague. As the reprocessing of the spent fuel produced by the last four units is not covered by the contracts concluded with Cogema, Synatom, the Belgian utilities’ subsidiary in charge of the front- and back-end of the nuclear fuel cycle for all PWR reactors in Belgium, decided to study the possible solutions for a temporary storage of this spent fuel. End of 1993, the Belgian government decided that reprocessing (closed cycle) and direct disposal (open cycle) of spent fuel had to be considered as equal options in the back-end policy for nuclear fuel in Belgium. The resolution further allowed continued execution of a running reprocessing contract (from 1978) and use of the corresponding Pu for MOX in Belgian NPP’s, but requested a reprocessing contract concluded in 1990 (for reprocessing services after 2000) not to be executed during a five-year period. During this period priority was to be given to studies on the once-through cycle as an option for spent fuel management. Figure 1 is a chart showing the two alternatives for the spent fuel cycle in Belgium. In this context, Synatom entrusted Belgatom1 to develop a dedicated flask (called “bottle”) for direct disposal of spent fuel, to perform a design study of an appropriate encapsulation process and to prepare a preliminary feasibility study of a complete spent fuel conditioning plant. Meanwhile preparation works were made for the construction of an interim storage facility on both NPP sites of Doel and Tihange in order to meet increasing storage capacity needs. For selecting the type of interim storage facility, Belgatom performed a technical-economical analysis. Considerations of design and safety criteria as well as flexibility, reversibility, technical constraints, global economical aspects and construction time led to adopt dry storage with dual purpose casks (in operation since end 1995) for the Doel site and wet storage in a modular pool for the Tihange site (in operation since 1997). In parallel, ONRAF/NIRAS, the Belgian Agency for the management of radioactive waste and enriched fissile materials and the Belgian nuclear research centre, SCK•CEN, conduct underground investigations in view of geological disposal. The paper describes the methodology that Belgatom has developed to provide the utilities with appropriate solutions (reracking, dry storage in casks, wet storage in ponds, etc.) and how Belgatom demonstrated also the feasibility of spent fuel conditioning with a view to direct disposal in clay layers. The spent fuel storage facilities in operation in Belgium and designed and built by Belgatom are then briefly presented.


Author(s):  
Jan Medved ◽  
Ladislav Vargovcik

The paper deals with experience, techniques and new applied equipment durig undergoing decommissioning process of the A-1 NPP long-term pool storage and the follow-up decommissioning plan. For rad-waste disposal of the long-term pool storage (where most of the contaminants had remained following the removal of spent fuel) special equipment has been developed, designed, constructed and installed. The purpose of this equipment is the restorage, drainage and fragmentation of cartridges (used as a spent fuel case), as well as treatment of sludge (located at the pool bottom) and of the remaining liquid radwaste. The drainage equipment for cartridges is designed for discharging KCr2 solution from cartridges with spent fuel rods into the handling storage tank in the short-term storage facility and adjustment of the cartridges for railway transport, prior to the liquidation of the spent fuel rod. The equipment ensures full remote visual control of the process and exact monitoring of its technical parameters, including that of the internal nitrogen atmosphere concentration value. Cartridges without fuel and liquid filling are transferred to the equipment for their processing which includes fragmentation into smaller parts, decontamination, filling into drums with their sealed closing and measurement of radioactive dose. For the fragmentation, special shearing equipment is used which leaves the pipe fragment open for the following decontamination. For cleaning the cartridge bottom from radioactive sludge water jet system is used combined with slow speed milling used for preparing the opening for water jet nozzle. The sludge from the cartridge bottom is fixed into ceramic matrix. Nuclear Power Plant JE A-1 (since 1980 in decommissioning) is situated in the locality of Jaslovske´ Bohunice. So far the decommissioning of the Long-term storage was carried out within Stage I of A-1NPP decommissioning. This year the Stage I of decommissioning finished, and the performance of Stage II of decommissioning was started. Decommissioning of the long-term storage facility continues within Stage II of the A-1 NPP decommissioning process.


Author(s):  
Bo Zhu ◽  
Yanhua Yang

The spent fuel disposal is a very important step during the recycling of nuclear fuel and the operation process is very complex and dangerous. With the fast development of nuclear power reactor in china, more and more spent fuel will occur and should be treated in the near future. For researching the spent fuel management and training the operators, we have been developing the virtual reality (VR) Simulation System for spent fuel reprocessing (VRSS) aimed at demonstrating and analyzing the treatment process. The VRSS is based the VR and visualization technology. Combined with the regulation of radiation protection, the integrated virtual operate environment is developed to enable user navigation the working place, and obtain target information “it can demonstrate the structure and component of equipment, it also can illustrate the disassembly craft transform principle and the operation way of extraction facility. It even can prompt the user how to operate when spent fuel handling accident occur.


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