Effects of High Burnup on Spent-Fuel Casks
- Nuclear Assurance Corp
Utility fuel managers have become very interested in higher burnup fuels as a means to reduce the impact of refueling outages. High-burnup fuels have significant effects on spent-fuel storage or transportation casks because additional heat rejection and shielding capabilities are required. Some existing transportation casks have useful margins that allow shipment of high-burnup fuel, especially the NLI-1/2 truck cask, which has been relicensed to carry pressurized water reactor (PWR) fuel with 56,000 MWd/ton U burnup at 450 days of cooling time. New cask designs should consider the effects of high burnup for future use, even though it is not commercially desirable to include currently unneeded capability. In conclusion, the increased heat and gamma radiation of high-burnup fuels can be accommodated by additional cooling time, but the increased neutron radiation source cannot be accommodated unless the balance of neutron and gamma contributions to the overall dose rate is properly chosen in the initial cask design. Criticality control of high-burnup fuels is possible with heavily poisoned baskets, but burnup credit in licensing is a much more direct means of demonstrating criticality safety.
- Research Organization:
- Nuclear Assurance Corp
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP)
- OSTI ID:
- 6952588
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-861102-; CODEN: TANSA
- Journal Information:
- Transactions of the American Nuclear Society, Vol. 53; Conference: American Nuclear Society and Atomic Industrial Forum Joint Meeting, Washington, DC (United States), 16 Nov 1986; ISSN 0003-018X
- Publisher:
- American Nuclear Society
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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SPENT FUEL STORAGE
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ELEMENTS
ENERGY TRANSFER
HAZARDS
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NEUTRON ABSORBERS
NUCLEAR FACILITIES
NUCLEAR POISONS
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RADIOACTIVE MATERIALS
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THERMAL POWER PLANTS
URANIUM
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Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP)
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Spent-Fuel Storage
Transportation Casks
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