The trends of spent fuel storage technologies in the various countries

摘要

In the various countries, spent nuclear fuel generated from nuclear power stations will be either "reprocessed", "stored" or "disposed". In any case, it will be "intermediately stored". Therefore, many kinds of storage technologies have been developed and put into practice. In Japan, since it has been determined that "storage facilities away from reactor sites" would be operated by 2010, there has been growing tendency of practical use of storage technology. In this report, taking account of these situations, we investigated trends of spent fuel storage technologies and principal storage technologies that have been developed or put into practical use in the various countries (22 countries), which will be informative for technological development in Japan. The background, process of adoption, and progress of each storage technology (spent fuel storage pool, metal cask, silo, concrete cask and vault) were described. Besides, we classified those storage facilities in various countries from three points of view (location, storage form and safety function), and showed future direction of these storage technologies. Moreover, we mentioned the applicability of these storage technologies of the various countries to Japan.