The Nuclear Fuel Storage Demonstration Project in Taiwan

摘要

The used fuel management strategy in Taiwan is threesteps: pool storage, dry storage and final disposal.The dry storage period is planned for 40 years until therepository is ready for receiving the spent fuel. Eventhough the major nuclear nations invest lots of manpowerand resource on the fuel behavior in dry storage to ensurethe safety and integrity of spent fuel, the unique operationof each nuclear power plant and lacks of BWR fuelexamination data after dry storage are needed to be takeninto concern. Taiwan Power Company and Institute ofNuclear Energy Research work together to conduct the“The Nuclear Fuel Storage Demonstration Project inTaiwan” to collect the local data of the fuelcharacteristics under dry storage.In this project, several irradiated BWR fuel rods amongdifferent fuel designs and fuel venders will be loaded intoa simulated storage cask for 10 years storage period.Non-destructed examinations will be executed prior toloading the fuel rods and periodically during storage.After 10 years, the fuel rods will be extracted andexamined nondestructively and destructively. This papersummarized the project progress, the draft test plan, andthe design of the integrated NDE system. After finishingthis project, the collected data and research results willbe compared with other international projects to providethe technical basis of the spent fuel management inTaiwan.