Benefits of actinide-only burnup credit for shutdown PWRs
- TRW Environmental Safety Systems, INc., Las Vegas, NV (United States)
- Maine Yankee Atomic Power Co., Westboro, MA (United States)
Owners of PWRs that are shutdown prior to resolution of interim storage or permanent disposal issues have to make difficult decisions on what to do with their spent fuel. Maine Yankee is currently evaluating multiple options for spent fuel storage. Their spent fuel pool has 1,434 assemblies. In order to evaluate the value to a utility of actinide-only burnup credit, analysis of the number of canisters required with and without burnup credit was made. In order to perform the analysis, loading curves were developed for the Holtec Hi-Star 100/MPC-32. The MPC-32 is hoped to be representative of future burnup credit designs from many vendors. The loading curves were generated using the actinide-only burnup credit currently under NRC review. The canister was analyzed for full loading (32 assemblies) and with partial loadings of 30 and 28 assemblies. If no burnup credit is used the maximum capacity was assumed to be 24 assemblies. this reduced capacity is due to the space required for flux traps which are needed to sufficiently reduce the canister reactivity for the fresh fuel assumption. Without burnup credit the 1,343 assemblies would require 60 canisters. If all the fuel could be loaded into the 32 assembly canisters only 45 canisters would be required. Although the actinide-only burnup credit approach is very conservative, the total number of canisters required is only 47 which is only two short of the minimum possible number of canisters. The utility is expected to buy the canister and the storage overpack. A reasonable cost estimate for the canister plus overpack is $500,000. Actinide-only burnup credit would save 13 canisters and overpacks which is a savings of about $6.5 million. This savings is somewhat reduced since burnup credit requires a verification measurement of burnup. The measurement costs for these assemblies can be estimated as about $1 million. The net savings would be $5.5 million.
- Research Organization:
- TRW Environmental Safety Systems Inc., Las Vegas, NV (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC08-91RW00134
- OSTI ID:
- 654097
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/RW/00134-M98-001; CONF-980606-; ON: DE98003188; BR: DB0306000; TRN: 98:010293
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Annual meeting of the American Nuclear Society, Nashville, TN (United States), 7-12 Jun 1998; Other Information: PBD: Feb 1998
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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