Dry cask storage
Encyclopedia
Radioactive waste
Radioactive wastes are wastes that contain radioactive material. Radioactive wastes are usually by-products of nuclear power generation and other applications of nuclear fission or nuclear technology, such as research and medicine...
, such as spent nuclear fuel
Spent nuclear fuel
Spent nuclear fuel, occasionally called used nuclear fuel, is nuclear fuel that has been irradiated in a nuclear reactor...
that has already been cooled in the spent fuel pool
Spent fuel pool
Spent fuel pools are storage pools for spent fuel from nuclear reactors. They are typically 40 or more feet deep, with the bottom 14 feet equipped with storage racks designed to hold fuel assemblies removed from the reactor. A reactor's pool is specially designed for the reactor in which the...
for at least one year.. These cask
CASK
Peripheral plasma membrane protein CASK is a protein that in humans is encoded by the CASK gene. This gene is also known by several other names: CMG 2 , calcium/calmodulin-dependent serine protein kinase 3 and membrane-associated guanylate kinase 2.-Genomics:This gene is located on the short arm of...
s are typically steel
Steel
Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...
cylinders that are either welded
Welding
Welding is a fabrication or sculptural process that joins materials, usually metals or thermoplastics, by causing coalescence. This is often done by melting the workpieces and adding a filler material to form a pool of molten material that cools to become a strong joint, with pressure sometimes...
or bolted closed. When inside, the fuel rods are surrounded by inert gas
Inert gas
An inert gas is a non-reactive gas used during chemical synthesis, chemical analysis, or preservation of reactive materials. Inert gases are selected for specific settings for which they are functionally inert since the cost of the gas and the cost of purifying the gas are usually a consideration...
. Ideally, the steel cylinder provides leak-tight containment of the spent fuel. Each cylinder is surrounded by additional steel, concrete
Concrete
Concrete is a composite construction material, composed of cement and other cementitious materials such as fly ash and slag cement, aggregate , water and chemical admixtures.The word concrete comes from the Latin word...
, or other material to provide radiation shielding to workers and members of the public. Some of the cask designs can be used for both storage and transportation.
There are various dry storage cask system designs. With some designs, the steel cylinders containing the fuel are placed vertically in a concrete vault; other designs orient the cylinders horizontally. The concrete vaults provide the radiation shielding. Other cask designs orient the steel cylinder vertically on a concrete pad at a dry cask storage site and use both metal and concrete outer cylinders for radiation shielding. Currently there is no long term permanent storage facility, dry cask storage is designed as an interim safer solution than spent pool storage.
The containers are also known as castor containers, which is an acronym for "cask for storage and transport of radioactive material". CASTOR is a tradename of the Gesellschaft für Nuklear-Service, a company for nuclear services.
Usage
During the 2000s, dry cask storage was used in the United States, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Japan, and Lithuania.United States
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the need for alternative storage in the United States began to grow when pools at many nuclear reactors began to fill up with stored spent fuel. As there was not a national storage facility in operation (Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository was, and remains, embroiled in controversy), utilities began looking at options for storing spent fuel. Dry cask storage was one of the most practical options for temporary storage.The first dry storage installation in the US was licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Nuclear Regulatory Commission
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is an independent agency of the United States government that was established by the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 from the United States Atomic Energy Commission, and was first opened January 19, 1975...
(NRC) in 1986 at the Surry Nuclear Power Plant
Surry Nuclear Power Plant
Surry Power Station is a nuclear power plant located in Surry County in southeastern Virginia. The power station lies on an 840-acre site adjacent to the James River across from Jamestown, slightly upriver from Smithfield and Newport News...
in Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
, at 37.1630°N 76.6861 °W. Spent fuel is currently stored in dry cask systems at a growing number of power plant sites, and at an interim facility located at the Idaho National Laboratory
Idaho National Laboratory
Idaho National Laboratory is an complex located in the high desert of eastern Idaho, between the town of Arco to the west and the cities of Idaho Falls and Blackfoot to the east. It lies within Butte, Bingham, Bonneville and Jefferson counties...
near Idaho Falls, Idaho
Idaho Falls, Idaho
Idaho Falls is a city in and the county seat of Bonneville County, Idaho, United States, and the largest city in Eastern Idaho. As of the 2010 census, the population of Idaho Falls was 56,813, with a metro population of 130,374....
. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission estimates that many of the nuclear power plants in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
will be out of room in their spent fuel pools by 2015, most likely requiring the use of temporary storage of some kind. Yucca Mountain was expected to open in 2017. However on March 5, 2009, Energy Secretary
United States Secretary of Energy
The United States Secretary of Energy is the head of the United States Department of Energy, a member of the President's Cabinet, and fifteenth in the presidential line of succession. The position was formed on October 1, 1977 with the creation of the Department of Energy when President Jimmy...
Steven Chu
Steven Chu
Steven Chu is an American physicist and the 12th United States Secretary of Energy. Chu is known for his research at Bell Labs in cooling and trapping of atoms with laser light, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997, along with his scientific colleagues Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and...
reiterated in a Senate hearing that the Yucca Mountain
Yucca Mountain
The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository was to be a deep geological repository storage facility for spent nuclear reactor fuel and other high level radioactive waste, until the project was canceled in 2009. It was to be located on federal land adjacent to the Nevada Test Site in Nye County,...
site was no longer considered an option for storing reactor waste.
In the 1990s, the NRC had to “take repeated actions to address defective welds on dry casks that led to cracks and quality assurance problems; helium had leaked into some casks, increasing temperatures and causing accelerated fuel corrosion”.
The 2008 NRC guideline calls for fuels to have spent at least five years in a storage pool before being moved to dry casks. It describes the dry casks used in the US as "designed to resist floods, tornadoes, projectiles, temperature extremes, and other unusual scenarios."
With the zeroing of the budget for Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada, more nuclear waste is being loaded into sealed metal casks filled with inert gas. Many of these casks will be stored in coastal or lakeside regions where a salt air environment exists, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is studying how such dry casks perform in salt environments. Some hope that the casks can be used for 100 years but cracking related to corrosion could occur in 30 years or less.
Canada
In Canada, above-ground dry storage has been used for a number of years. Ontario Power GenerationOntario Power Generation
Ontario Power Generation is a public company wholly owned by the Government of Ontario. OPG is responsible for approximately 70% of the electricity generation in the Province of Ontario, Canada. Sources of electricity include nuclear, hydroelectric, solar, wind, and fossil fuel...
is in the process of constructing a Dry Storage Cask storage facility on its Darlington
Darlington Nuclear Generating Station
Darlington Nuclear Generating Station is a Canadian nuclear power station located on the north shore of Lake Ontario in Clarington, Ontario. The facility derives its name from the Township of Darlington, the former name of the municipality in which it is located.The Darlington station is a large...
site, which will be similar in many respects to existing facilities at Pickering Nuclear Generating Station
Pickering Nuclear Generating Station
Pickering Nuclear Generating Station is a Canadian nuclear power station located on the north shore of Lake Ontario in Pickering, Ontario. The facility derives its name from the City of Pickering in which it is located....
and Bruce Nuclear Generating Station
Bruce Nuclear Generating Station
Bruce Nuclear Generating Station is a Canadian nuclear power station located on the eastern shore of Lake Huron, in the communities of Inverhuron and Tiverton, Ontario. It occupies 932 ha of land. The facility derives its name from Bruce County in which it is located, in the former Bruce Township...
. NB Power's Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station
Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station
Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station is a Canadian nuclear power station located 2 km northeast of Point Lepreau, New Brunswick. The facility was constructed between 1975-1983 by NB Power, the provincially-owned public utility....
and Hydro-Québec's
Hydro-Québec
Hydro-Québec is a government-owned public utility established in 1944 by the Government of Quebec. Based in Montreal, the company is in charge of the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity across Quebec....
Gentilly Nuclear Generating Station
Gentilly Nuclear Generating Station
Gentilly Nuclear Generating Station is a Canadian nuclear power station located near Bécancour, Quebec. The facility derives its name from the Gentilly suburb of the city of Bécancour, in which it is located...
also both operate dry storage facilities.
Germany
A centralized storage facility using dry casks is located at AhausAhaus
Ahaus is a municipality in the district of Borken in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located near the border with the Netherlands, lying some 20 km south-east of Enschede....
. As of 2011, it housed 311 casks; 305 from the Thorium High Temperature Reactor, 3 from the Neckarwestheim Nuclear Power Plant
Neckarwestheim Nuclear Power Plant
Neckarwestheim Nuclear Power Station is a nuclear power plant in Neckarwestheim, Germany. It is sometimes abbreviated GKN . It is operated by EnBW Kernkraft GmbH.-GKN 1:...
, and 3 from the Gundremmingen Nuclear Power Plant
Gundremmingen Nuclear Power Plant
The Gundremmingen Nuclear Power Plant is the highest-output nuclear power station in Germany, producing 2 × 1344 megawatts. It is located in Gundremmingen, district of Günzburg, Bavaria and is operated by Kernkraftwerk Gundremmingen GmbH, a joint operation of RWE Power AG, based in Essen and E.ON...
. The transport from Gundremmingen to the Ahaus site met with considerable public protest and the power plant operators and the government later agreed to locate such casks at the powerplants.
Lithuania
Spent fuel from the now-closed Ignalina Nuclear Power PlantIgnalina Nuclear Power Plant
The Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant is a closed two-unit RBMK-1500 nuclear power station in Visaginas, Lithuania. It was named after the nearby city of Ignalina...
was placed in CASTOR and CONSTOR
CONSTOR
CONSTOR is a cask used for transport and long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste manufactured by Gesellschaft für Nuklear-Service. Its inner and outer layers are steel, enclosing a layer of concrete....
storage casks during the 2000s.
See also
- Deep geological repositoryDeep geological repositoryA deep geological repository is a nuclear waste repository excavated deep within a stable geologic environment...
- Goshute reservationGoshuteThe Goshutes are a band of Western Shoshone Native American. There are two federally recognized Goshute tribes today: the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation and Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians of Utah of the Skull Valley Indian Reservation.-Name:The name Goshute derived either from...
Proposed storage location in Utah. - Lists of nuclear disasters and radioactive incidents
- Radioactive wasteRadioactive wasteRadioactive wastes are wastes that contain radioactive material. Radioactive wastes are usually by-products of nuclear power generation and other applications of nuclear fission or nuclear technology, such as research and medicine...
- Spent fuel poolSpent fuel poolSpent fuel pools are storage pools for spent fuel from nuclear reactors. They are typically 40 or more feet deep, with the bottom 14 feet equipped with storage racks designed to hold fuel assemblies removed from the reactor. A reactor's pool is specially designed for the reactor in which the...
- Spent nuclear fuel shipping caskSpent nuclear fuel shipping caskSpent nuclear fuel shipping casks are used to transport spent nuclear fuel used in nuclear power plants and research reactors to disposal sites such as the nuclear reprocessing center at COGEMA La Hague site...