To be located in southeastern New Mexico near Carlsbad, the facility would store spent nuclear fuel, which is better referred to as slightly used nuclear fuel, until a final disposal facility is built or until we build our new fast reactors that will burn it, or we recycle it into new fuel.
Reactor fuel usually spends five years in the reactor, after which about 5% of the energy in the fuel is used, but fission products of the reactions have built-up to the point where the fuel must be replaced. After leaving the reactor, the spent fuel usually spends about 5 years in spent fuel pools of water, until heat and radiation have decreased sufficiently to allow the fuel to be passively cooled in a dry cask .
At this point the dry casks can stay where they are for over a century, or be moved to a centralized storage facility like Holtec is proposing. This would make the logistics and costs of storage easier and lower than having dozens of sites around the country, especially at those sites where the reactors themselves are gone.
A study by Oak Ridge National Laboratory showed an interim storage site would save the U.S. Treasury $15 billion by 2040, $30 billion by 2050, and $54 billion by 2060.
The NRC has concluded that spent fuel storage in pools and casks is safe and secure. This and other nuclear developments follow directly from the recommendations of President Obama’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, and were followed up in the President’s Memorandum on disposal of Defense High-Level Waste and the 2013 Administration’s Strategy for the Management and Disposal of Used Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste.
Conca and Wright (2012) provide background on nuclear waste and interpretation of the three BRC recommendations pertaining to nuclear waste disposal that has led to some of these changes.
Interim storage of spent nuclear fuel is nothing new. It’s been going on in the United States for decades at existing nuclear plant sites. Much of our used fuel, over 70,000 tons, is in interim storage in pools and casks at operating nuclear power plants, and several that have been shut down and decommissioned, throughout the country.
Dry casks are typically constructed of one or more shells of steel, cast iron, and reinforced concrete to provide leak containment and radiation shielding. Casts typically hold 10 tons of spent fuel. At present, dry cask storage is licensed at 35 nuclear plant sites in 24 states. There are 65 sites with operating reactors in the United States.
Now that Holtec’s application has been accepted for review, it will take several years to license and construct such a consolidated interim storage facility.
To read the full story, visit https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2018/03/06/will-we-actually-get-a-place-to-store-our-nuclear-waste/#17f53c6823a0.