Issues at Stake When Considering Long Term Storage of HLW a Comprehensive Approach to Designing the Facility
CEA has been conducting a comprehensive R&D program to identify and study key HLW storage design criteria to possibly meet the lifetime goal of a century and beyond. A novel approach is being used since such installations must be understood as a global system comprised of various materials and hardware components, canisters, concrete and steel structures and specific procedures covering engineering steps from construction to operation including monitoring, care and maintenance as well as licensing. The challenge set by such a lifetime design goal made the R&D people focus on issues at stake and relevant to long term HLW storage in particular heat management, the effect of time on materials and the sustainability of care and maintenance. This opened up the R&D field from fundamental research areas to more conventional and technical aspects. Two major guiding principles have been devised as key design goals for the storage concepts under consideration. One is the paramount function of retrievability, which must allow the safe retrieval of any HLW package from the facility at any given time. Next is the passive containment philosophy requiring that a dual-barrier system be considered. In the case of spent fuel, CEA's early assessment of the long-term behavior of cladding shows that it may not qualify as a reliable barrier over a long period of time. Therefore, the overriding strategy of preventing corrosion and material degradation to achieve canister protection, and therefore containment of radioactive material throughout the time of period envisaged, is at the heart of the R&D program and several design alternatives are being studied to meet that objective. For instance available thermal power from SF is used to establish dry corrosion conditions within the storage facility. The paper reviews all of these different R&D and engineering aspects.
- Research Organization:
- Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique, Gif sur Yvette (FR)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- none (US)
- OSTI ID:
- 827601
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Waste Management 2003 Symposium, Tucson, AZ (US), 02/23/2003--02/27/2003; Other Information: PBD: 25 Feb 2003
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE WASTES, AND NON-RADIOACTIVE WASTES FROM NUCLEAR FACILITIES
36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
CONCRETES
CONSTRUCTION
CONTAINERS
CONTAINMENT
CORROSION
LIFETIME
MAINTENANCE
MANAGEMENT
MONITORING
RADIOACTIVE MATERIALS
SPENT FUELS
STEELS
STORAGE
WASTE MANAGEMENT