Interim Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel: An Assessment of Technologies and Challenges

Abstract

Spent fuel discharged from nuclear reactors must necessarily be handled further, whether or not a closed fuel cycle is adopted by a nation. Thus every nuclear facility must have provisions of spent fuel storage to cool it sufficiently and to allow its radioactivity to decrease substantially before reprocessing or before its ultimate disposal. With increasing importance of nuclear power in the days to come, it will become necessary to handle ever increasing volumes of spent fuel and thus their proper storage and management is crucial to the safe operation and long term sustainability of a nuclear power plant. This work presents an overview of existing spent fuel management technology applied globally and discusses research work being presently undertaken worldwide to provide ways of sorting out some technical issues and improving various aspects of the storage technology so as to meet the challenges that a growing nuclear power industry is likely to face in the near future.  Keywords: Spent fuel, Interim storage, Dry cask, Vault, Wet storage, Transportation