• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.237-248
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• 2010

The safety of metal cask and concrete cask storage technology has been verified by CRIEPI through several research programs on demonstrative testing for the interim storage of spent fuel. The results have been reflected in the safety requirements for dry casks issued by NISA/METI (Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry) of the Japanese government. On top of that, spent fuel integrity has been studied by the Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organization (JNES). This paper reviews these research programs. Future issues include the long-term integrity of cask components and high burn-up spent fuel.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.35-44
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• 2016

Leading national R&D project to design a PWR spent nuclear fuel interim dry storage system that has been under development since mid-2009, which consists of a dual purpose metal cask and concrete storage cask. To ensure the safe operation of dry storage systems in foreign countries, major confinement monitoring techniques currently consist of pressure and temperature measurement. In the case of a dual purpose metal cask, a pressure sensor is installed in the interspace of bolted double lid(primary and secondary lid) in order to measure pressure. A concrete storage cask is a canister based system made of double/redundant welded lid to ensure confinement integrity. For this reason, confinement monitoring method is real time temperature measurement by thermocouple placed in the air flow(air intake and exit) of the concrete structure(over pack and module). The use of various monitoring technologies and operating experiences for the interim dry storage system over the last decades in foreign countries were analyzed. On the basis of the analysis above, development of the confinement monitoring technology that can be used optimally in our system will be available in the near future.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.391-402
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• 2017

The Korea Radioactive Waste Agency (KORAD) has developed a concrete cask for the dry storage of spent nuclear fuel that has been generated by domestic light-water reactors. During long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel in concrete casks kept in dry conditions, the integrity of the concrete cask and spent nuclear fuel must be maintained. In addition, the radiation dose rate must not exceed the storage facility's design standards. A suitable shielding design for radiation protection must be in place for the dry storage facilities of spent nuclear fuel under normal and accident conditions. Evaluation results show that the appropriate distance to the annual dose rate of 0.25 mSv for ordinary citizens is approximately 230 m. For a $2{\times}10$ arrangement within storage facilities, rollover accidents are assumed to have occurred while transferring one additional storage cask, with the bottom of the cask facing the controlled area boundary. The dose rates of 12.81 and 1.28 mSv were calculated at 100 m and 230 m from the outermost cask in the $2{\times}10$ arrangement. Therefore, a spent nuclear fuel concrete cask and storage facilities maintain radiological safety if the distance to the appropriately assessed controlled area boundary is ensured. In the future, the results of this study will be useful for the design and operation of nuclear power plant on-site storage or intermediate storage facilities based on the spent fuel management strategy.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.271-279
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• 2018

During the seven years from 2009 to 2016, PWR SNF (spent nuclear fuel) transportation and storage systems suitable for domestic conditions were developed by the government to cope with the saturation of wet storage capacity in NPPs. One of the developed systems is a multipurpose metal cask applicable for transportation/storage; the other is a concrete cask dedicated to storage. Efficient cask technologies were secured utilizing the characteristics and experience of relevant industrial, academic and research institutes. Technological independence was also achieved through several patent registrations of research outcomes. To prepare for a rapid increase of demand in the near future, technology transfer of secured patents and technologies to the domestic industry was carried out twice in the years of 2016 and 2017.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.313-327
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• 1996

As an at-reactor(AR) storage method o( spent fuel, there are horizontal concrete module type, metal storage cask type, concrete storage cask type, dual purpose (transportation and storage) cask type and multi-purpose (transportation, storage and disposal) cask type. All other types except multi-purpose one have been already used for AR dry storage of spent fuels after obtaining operation license in various foreign countries. Also the development of multi-purpose type has been continued for operation license. In America, Japan, Germany, Canada, Spain, Switzerland, and Czech Republic, etc., AR dry storage facilities are under operation or on propulsion, and spent fuels are transported to interim storage facility or reprocessing plant after dry storage at reactor temporarily. At Wolsung site, in case of Korea, concrete silo type has already been introduced, and it is believed to be inevitable to store spent fuels at reactor temporarily, considering the reality that storage capacity of spent fuel is approaching to the limit in some nuclear power plants. In this report, the system characteristics, design requirements, technical standards and status of AR storage system, which is suitable for domestic site such as Kori, have been studied. In most cases, the licensed period of storage cask is limited up to 20 years and the integrity of material and maintenance of leaktightness are required during the whole service life.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.7
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• pp.2604-2612
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• 2023

Spent nuclear fuel and long-lived radioactive waste must be carefully handled before disposing them off to a geological repository. After the pre-storage period in water pools, spent nuclear fuel is stored in casks, which are widely used for interim storage. Interim storage in casks is very important part in the whole cycle of nuclear energy generation. This paper presents the results of the numerical study that was performed to evaluate the thermal behavior of a metal-concrete CONSTOR RBMK-1500 cask loaded with spent nuclear fuel and placed in an open type interim storage facility which is under fire conditions (steady-state, fire, post-fire). The modelling was performed using the ANSYS Fluent code. Also, a local sensitivity analysis of thermal parameters on temperature variation was performed. The analysis demonstrated that the maximum increase in the fuel load temperatures is about 10 ℃ and 8 ℃ for 30 min 800 ℃ and 60 min 600 ℃ fires respectively. Therefore, during the fire and the post-fire periods, the fuel load temperatures did not exceed the 300 ℃ limiting temperature set for an RBMK SNF cladding for long-term storage. This ensures that fire accident does not cause overheating of fuel rods in a cask.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.13-22
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• 2004

This study presents the thermal analyses of a spent fuel dry storage cask under normal and off-normal conditions. The environmental temperature is assumed to be 15 $^{\circ}C$ under the normal condition. The off-normal condition has an environmental temperature of 38 $^{\circ}C$. An additional off-normal condition is considered as a partial blockage of the air inlet ducts. Two of the four air inlet ducts are assumed to be completely blocked. The significant thermal design feature of the storage cask is the air flow path used to remove the decay heat from the spent fuel. Natural circulation of the air inside the cask allows the concrete and fuel cladding temperatures to be maintained below the allowable values. The finite volume computational fluid dynamics code FLUENT was used for the thermal analysis. The maximum temperatures of the fuel rod and concrete overpack were lower than the allowable values under the normal and off-normal conditions.

• Journal of computational fluids engineering
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.33-39
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• 2016

Generally, thermal analysis of spent fuel storage cask has been conducted using the porous media and effective thermal conductivity model to simplify the structural complexity of spent fuel assemblies. As the fuel assembly is composed of two regions; active fuel region corresponding to UO2 pellets and unactive fuel region corresponding to the top and bottom nozzle, the heat transfer performance can be influenced depending on porous media application at these regions. In this study, numerical analysis on concrete storage cask of spent fuel was performed to investigate heat transfer effects for two cases; one was porous media application only to active fuel region(case 1) and the other one was porous media to whole length of fuel assembly(case 2). Using computational fluid dynamics code, the three dimensional, 1/4 symmetry model was constructed. For two cases, maximum temperatures for each component were evaluated below the allowable limits. For the case 1, maximum temperatures for fuel cladding, neutron absorber and baskets inside the canister were slightly higher than those for the case 2. In particular, even though the helium flows with low velocity due to buoyant forces occurred at the top and bottom of unactive fuel region, treating only active fuel region as the porous media was ineffective in respect of the heat removal performance of concrete storage cask, implying a conservative result.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.91-99
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• 2017

Domestically developed concrete storage casks include an internal canister to maintain the confinement integrity of radio-active materials. In this study, we analyzed the depth of flaws caused by loads that propagate canister weld cracks under normal, off-normal and accident conditions, and evaluated the maximum allowable weld flaw depth needed to secure the structural integrity of the canister weld and to reduce the welding time of the internal canister lid of the concrete storage cask. Structural analyses for normal, off-normal and accident conditions were performed using the general-purpose finite element analysis program ABAQUS; the allowable flaw depth was assessed according to ASME B&PV Code Section XI. Evaluation results revealed an allowable canister weld flaw depth of 18.75 mm for the concrete storage cask, which satisfies the critical flaw depth recommended in NUREG-1536.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.46 no.4
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• pp.547-556
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• 2014

Korea expects a shortage in storage capacity for spent fuels at reactor sites. Therefore, a need for more metal and/or concrete casks for storage systems is anticipated for either the reactor site or away from the reactor for interim storage. For the purpose of interim storage and transportation, a dual purpose metal cask that can load 21 spent fuel assemblies is being developed by Korea Radioactive Waste Management Corporation (KRMC) in Korea. At first the gamma and neutron flux for the design basis fuel were determined assuming in-core environment (the temperature, pressure, etc. of the moderator, boron, cladding, $UO_2$ pellets) in which the design basis fuel is loaded, as input data. The evaluation simulated burnup up to 45,000 MWD/MTU and decay during ten years of cooling using the SAS2H/OGIGEN-S module of the SCALE5.1 system. The results from the source term evaluation were used as input data for the final shielding evaluation utilizing the MCNP Code, which yielded the effective dose rate. The design of the cask is based on the safety requirements for normal storage conditions under 10 CFR Part 72. A radiation shielding analysis of the metal storage cask optimized for loading 21 design basis fuels was performed for two cases; one for a single cask and the other for a $2{\times}10$ cask array. For the single cask, dose rates at the external surface of the metal cask, 1m and 2m away from the cask surface, were evaluated. For the $2{\times}10$ cask array, dose rates at the center point of the array and at the center of the casks' height were evaluated. The results of the shielding analysis for the single cask show that dose rates were considerably higher at the lower side (from the bottom of the cask to the bottom of the neutron shielding) of the cask, at over 2mSv/hr at the external surface of the cask. However, this is not considered to be a significant issue since additional shielding will be installed at the storage facility. The shielding analysis results for the $2{\times}10$ cask array showed exponential decrease with distance off the sources. The controlled area boundary was calculated to be approximately 280m from the array, with a dose rate of 25mrem/yr. Actual dose rates within the controlled area boundary will be lower than 25mrem/yr, due to the decay of radioactivity of spent fuel in storage.