Perspective of Dry Interim Storage of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) in Germany - 16504

Conference · Fri Jul 01 04:00:00 EDT 2016

OSTI ID:22838289

Gastl, Christoph; Palmes, Julia ^[1]

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1. Federal Office of Radiation Protection (Germany)

According to article 6 of the German Atomic Energy Act, storage of nuclear fuel requires a license granted by the competent authority in this field, which is the Federal Office of Radiation Protection (BfS). In 1995 a license to store spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and vitrified high level waste (HAW) for the interim storage facility in Gorleben was granted. Dry Interim storage at the NPP sites in its current form started in 2002 in the interim storage facility next to the NPP Lingen. Since this time each NPP erected its own storage facility and three central storage facilities have been built. All of these facilities use dry storage in metallic dual purpose casks (DPCs). The actual storage licenses for SNF and the HAW (which is stored in Gorleben and Rubenow) are limited to 40 years after closing the transport and storage cask. The first license to expire will be the storage license for the interim storage facility in Gorleben in the year 2035. During the last two years in Germany preparatory consultations to restart the process towards finding a repository took place, organised by a commission. This commission consists out of members of the scientific community, religious parties, social communities and environmental organizations as well as members of federal states governments and members of the German parliament (Bundestag). Recently the commission decided to extend its working period until summer 2016. Taking this background into account the BfS plans to intensify its research into extended interim storage with respect to potential material degradation leading to interference with safety functions (e.g. neutron shielding material). This includes topics like ageing of gasket materials which are already studied in ongoing experiments (e.g. at the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing) as well as studies of long term relaxation processes. Because of the need for transportation towards a repository another important field is the behaviour of the inventory under mechanical loads. For SNF, first calculations showed that because of the lower decay heat load after 60 years due to hydride reorientation the cladding might become much less ductile. (authors)

• Research Organization: WM Symposia, Inc., PO Box 27646, 85285-7646 Tempe, AZ (United States)
• OSTI ID: 22838289
• Report Number(s): INIS-US--19-WM-16504
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE WASTES FROM NUCLEAR FACILITIES
AFTER-HEAT
AGING
CASKS
CLADDING
DRY STORAGE
FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY
HIGH-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTES
INTERFERENCE
NEUTRONS
NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS
RADIATION PROTECTION
RADIOACTIVE WASTE STORAGE
SHIELDING MATERIALS
SPENT FUEL STORAGE
STORAGE FACILITIES
VITRIFICATION