Characteristics of DOE spent nuclear fuel affecting pretreatment and final disposition

摘要

The Department of Energy (DOE) has more than 150 different types of Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF), comprising more than 200,000 units, in storage at DOE, private non-DOE, university facilities across the United States and foreign countries. The present DOE SNF management plan does not include reprocessing the fuel for the recovery of uranium, but involves interim storage until DOE is prepared to disposition the fuel in a national repository. Prior to any long term actions the SNF will need to be characterized sufficiently to support the proposed actions. The determination of which characteristics will be important will depend on the proposed action. Some characteristics will be universally important. There is a need to understand the characteristics of the SNF and to put the fuel in categories of SNF with similar characteristics. This will allow the evaluation of the SNF and the proposed dispositioning options by categories rather than individually.