IRP - Fuel Aging in Storage and Transportation (FAST): Accelerated Characterization and Performance Assessment of the Used Nuclear Fuel Storage System

Nuclear energy systems continue to be a significant and growing component of the United States energy portfolio. However, open questions regarding the final disposition of used nuclear fuel (UNF) represent a continued challenge to the long-term viability of nuclear energy. Even the most uninterested members of the public understand that the key technical question that persists is, 'What are we going to do about the waste?' Even more, two recent events have raised the global national awareness of the significance of and need for safe storage of used nuclear fuel: 1) the termination of proposed deep geologic repository at Yucca Mt., NV and 2) the ongoing events at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plants following the tragic earthquake and tsunami in Japan in March 2011. This Integrated Research Project (IRP) combines expertise from 6 universities and 2 national laboratories with 18 individual investigators and their respective research groups. The organization will function as a matrixed engineering research team focused on four distinct, yet integrated Technical Mission Areas (TMAs): TMA1: Low Temperature Creep, TMA2: Hydrogen Behavior and Delayed Hydride Cracking, TMA3: UNF Canister Corrosion, and TMA4: Novel System Monitoring. The TMAs are designed to address challenges relevant to almost every Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation (ISFSI) system currently deployed or under development, with a special emphasis on high burnup fuel. This is an applied engineering project with a specific application in view (i.e., UNF dry storage). On the other hand, the proposed tasks comprise a mixture of basic science and engineering methods designed to characterize and (where appropriate) accelerate the phenomena under study. The overall objective is to create predictive tools in the form of observation methods, phenomenological models, and databases that will enable the design, installation, and licensing of dry UNF storage systems that will be capable of containing UNF for up to 300 years.