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Options and Technologies for Managing the Back End of the Research Reactor Nuclear Fuel Cycle
Closed for proposals
Project Type
Project Code
T33001CRP
2025Approved Date
Start Date
Expected End Date
Completed Date
10 August 2018Description
This CRP will review and summarize the options and technologies available for managing the back end of the research reactor nuclear fuel cycle. This project will achieve two key objectives. First, past work will be leveraged to identify and define a comprehensive set of short- and long -term strategies for managing the back end of the research reactor nuclear fuel cycle. Single-country strategies will be analysed by using a standard approach and compared to potential take-back regional and multinational options, including commercially available or otherwise agreed back-end services. Second, the economic, technological and infrastructural requirements for enabling each strategy will be defined. The focus will be on matching options to the capabilities of countries with research reactors but lacking an industrial-scale civilian nuclear power industry. Country-specific case studies will be developed. Three Research Coordination Meetings and two workshops will be held in order to ensure that Member States are well aware of the options available to them.
Objectives
This CRP will include Member States who are responsible for the management of research reactor spent fuel as well as those who are currently building and planning new research reactors. The overall objective of this CRP is to define, characterize and disseminate a range of long-term strategies for managing the back end of the research reactor nuclear fuel cycle. The technologies comprising the strategies will focus on short- and long -term storage and ultimate disposal including both back-end strategies of either prior spent fuel reprocessing or direct spent fuel disposal. A publication will be issued to ensure outreach of CRP findings. It is important to recognize that economic and human resources, existing infrastructure and geography will play key roles in defining the strategies that make the most sense for each country. For that reason, this CRP will emphasize concerns specific to countries that do not possess large commercial nuclear energy infrastructures. The key product of this work will assess RRSF storage and ultimate disposal taking into account safety and security requirements, technologies and human and economic resource requirements with respect to the constraints faced by these countries.
Specific objectives
1. Development of a standard approach to assess and analyse individual research reactor back end options. This methodology will consider inter alia, the number of spent fuel, the costs involved, identification and characterization of the broad classes of short and long term RRSF management strategies, for instance ongoing at-reactor or away-from-reactor storage, processing/separation, disposal, take-back to country of origin and other cooperative multinational options, and identification of the economic and human resources requirements associated with each technology and RRSF management strategy.
The technical component of the CRP may involve predicting inventories of SNF using codes such as ORIGEN (https://rsicc.ornl.gov/codes/ccc/ccc3/ccc-371.html) or ALEPH, (http://publications.sckcen.be/dspace/bitstream/10038/231/1/aleph_1_1_2_r...). Other modeling & simulation requirements may arise in connection with evaluating containers for storing RRSF, potential reprocessing technologies, disposal environments, or additional engineered systems.
3. Quantitative comparison of national research reactor spent fuel management approaches versus regional or multinational arrangements for commercially available or otherwise agreed back-end services.
4. Examination of the value of research reactor coalitions in strengthening the negotiation power of the coalition as compared to a single research reactor (i.e. increase of the economic scale because of the larger number of spent fuel, reducing transportation costs, safety and security costs and in general overhead costs).
5. The results will be published as an IAEA Technical Report Series document and will be made available to the research reactor community.
2. Quantitative assessment of the back end options for all participant countries in the CRP.
The research objectives of the CRP are tied to defining the challenge (RRSF inventories, types and characteristics, possible ways for treatment and conditioning of the spent fuel, identification of radioactive waste management tasks required) and quantifying the performance of each potential solution to the challenge. Research tasks will include:
Impact
Impact is immediate, in that some of the participating MSs used the decision tools to determine their RRSNF strategies during the course of the CRP. Short term (2019, 2020), we expect bilateral or regional requests for assistance in using the decision-support tools.
Relevance
High relevance. In all MSs participating and several others attending workshop in November 2018, there is high interest in understanding the RRSNF management options to identify the best solutions for each situation.