A safety and regulatory assessment of generic BWR and PWR permanently shutdown nuclear power plants
- Brookhaven National Lab., Upton, NY (United States)
The long-term availability of less expensive power and the increasing plant modification and maintenance costs have caused some utilities to re-examine the economics of nuclear power. As a result, several utilities have opted to permanently shutdown their plants. Each licensee of these permanently shutdown (PSD) plants has submitted plant-specific exemption requests for those regulations that they believe are no longer applicable to their facility. This report presents a regulatory assessment for generic BWR and PWR plants that have permanently ceased operation in support of NRC rulemaking activities in this area. After the reactor vessel is defueled, the traditional accident sequences that dominate the operating plant risk are no longer applicable. The remaining source of public risk is associated with the accidents that involve the spent fuel. Previous studies have indicated that complete spent fuel pool drainage is an accident of potential concern. Certain combinations of spent fuel storage configurations and decay times, could cause freshly discharged fuel assemblies to self heat to a temperature where the self sustained oxidation of the zircaloy fuel cladding may cause cladding failure. This study has defined four spent fuel configurations which encompass all of the anticipated spent fuel characteristics and storage modes following permanent shutdown. A representative accident sequence was chosen for each configuration. Consequence analyses were performed using these sequences to estimate onsite and boundary doses, population doses and economic costs. A list of candidate regulations was identified from a screening of 10 CFR Parts 0 to 199. The continued applicability of each regulation was assessed within the context of each spent fuel storage configuration and the results of the consequence analyses.
- Research Organization:
- US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Washington, DC (United States). Div. of Regulatory Applications; Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC02-76CH00016
- OSTI ID:
- 510336
- Report Number(s):
- NUREG/CR-6451; BNL-NUREG-52498; ON: TI97008352; TRN: 97:014546
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: Aug 1997
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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