| |

Ucilia Wang Contributor


Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.


Contact Ucilia Wang


Green Tech 1,848 views

Looking For A Safe Way To Store Spent Nuclear Fuel

What to do with spent nuclear fuel has been one of the headaches for promoting nuclear power development. The federal government on Tuesday said it will provide $15.8 million to a new project to design a better way to store the used fuel outside of nuclear power plants.

The Department of Energy is funding the 5-year project to look for ways to employ what’s called “dry storage cask technology” to store used nuclear fuel that has been moved off nuclear power plants. The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), which conducts research and development for its utility members, will head the project.

Today, spent nuclear fuel is typically stored at the nuclear power plants. That’s mainly because a national push create an offsite storage in Nevada‘s Yucca Mountain ran into so much opposition that the federal government canceled the project. The energy department filed a motion to withdraw its licensing application for the project in March 2010.

By law, the federal government is supposed to provide an offsite storage for spent nuclear fuel. Without it, the taxpayers are footing the bill for nuclear power plant owners for storing it themselves. This 2012 article published by the National Academy of Engineering said the taxpayers had already spent $2 billion to do just that. The cost to taxpayers could reach $20.8 billion if the federal government waits until, say, 2020 to start taking over the storage responsibility.

Used nuclear fuel is still radioactive, so figuring out a way to safely contain it presents quite a challenge. The energy department is particularly interested in the storage of what it calls “high burn-up” spent nuclear fuel, an improvement in fuel technology in the last few years that allows nuclear power plant operators to extract almost twice the amount of energy from the fuel.

Since this type of spent fuel is pretty new, the federal government wants to see what’s the best way to contain it when it’s moved out of power plants. EPRI and its utility members will be responsible for contributing at least 20% of the project’s cost.

Nuclear fuel is used in reactors to generate steam, which then runs the turbines and generators to produce electricity. There are two ways to store spent fuel: wet storage that involves pools of water and dry storage that uses canisters or casks. Spent fuel that was just removed from reactors usually produces too much heat to be safe for dry storage right away, so it typically stays in a pool for some years before it goes into dry storage.

The EPRI project will focus on creating an improved dry cask system, and this new system needs to be able to store the spent fuel safely for a long time. The five-year time span will allow researchers to come up with a storage system in the lab, test its performance and use the data they gather to predict how well the system will do over a longer period of time, said an energy department spokeswoman.

We have a complex relationship with nuclear power. May policy makers around the world see it as part of their long-term energy plans. It production emits less carbon emissions than coal or natural gas power plants (zero emissions, in fact). Its ability to generate power around the clock sets it apart from other low-carbon and intermittent power sources such as wind and solar. Nuclear plants, on average, are as efficient at producing electricity as coal fire power plants and more efficient than natural gas power plants, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration­­.                                                                           

But a major mishap at a nuclear power can inflict a lot more pain and suffering. The Fukushima nuclear plant disaster in March 2011 proved that.

Post Your Comment

Please or sign up to comment.


  • Fred Zyphel Fred Zyphel 1 year ago

    DOE has no money to continue licensing Yucca Mountain (would obviate need for long term dry cask storage), but has $15.8 million to spend on the development of yet another cask design needed only because of not finalizing Yucca Mt. I think the “green” in this story is more wasted taxpayer money so Harry Reid can show off the size of his personality.

  • Joe Black Joe Black 1 year ago

    If China can build a 200MW reactor using spent nuclear fuel in stead of having to actively manage and cool the spent fuel in pools – And at atmospheric pressure – Then surely it is an option that should be considered. It is not a lot of power in the grand scheme of things, but it is something.

  • What happened to the TAD casks postulated by D.O.E. in their last FEIS version
    for Yucca Mountain ? (TAD was for transport, aging and disposal)
    Those were supposed to hold the spent fuel forever. Are we spending money for
    nothing ?

  • Ucilia Wang Ucilia Wang, Contributor 1 year ago

    DOE ended the Yucca Mountain project because of political/environmental opposition, so whatever plans for transporting and storing the spent fuel went away with the project closure. I don’t think we spent money for nothing. Whatever research work that went into the project remains and can be applied for future projects. The science didn’t disappear, it was the public support that did.

  • I should have thought that we might have understood each other at first.
    D.O.E. conceived a design of a cask that would be used once all the way to disposal or retrievable storage. The EPRI design goes back to the old idea of storing spent fuel – for a longer time if you like – at the power station.
    This means EPRI spends $15.8 million on designing something that is not even halfway what D.O.E. already designed – or had in the works- years ago.
    THAT research work that went into the Yucca project remains and can be applied for future projects…if you allow me to use your own words.
    Public support didn’t disappear at local(Nye County etc.) level.
    It was always there.
    Public support didn’t disappear at State(Nevada) level.
    It was never there.

  • Utilities have been using dry storage cask for years to store spent nuclear fuel and so it is not the reason that the DOE and electric utilities are funding this research as you seem to indicate. Rather it is a response by both these parties from their recognition that spent fuel will likely remain on commercial nuclear sites a lot longer than either its customers or taxpayers anticipate. You correctly identify the expected cost to the taxpayer resulting from the DOE’s delay in taking possession of the spent fuel but I believe that the need for research is prompted by delays much longer than this given that on-site dry cask storage facilities are currently licensed for 20 years and up to 40 years if recertified.

    High-burnup fuel is not as recent a technology as you seem to indicate but a one that started commercial implementation in the mid 1980’s and has been maturing over the years. The extraction of twice as much energy from this type of fuel is overstating the case because it implies an increase in efficiency. Rather high-burnup technology allows the initial energy content (i.e. U-235) of the fuel to be increased. Consequently high-burnup fuel experiences a more demanding environment in the reactor and the materials from which this fuel is manufactured have been improving over the years to better deal with it.

    On-site dry cask storage of spent fuel, irrespective of its burnup, beyond 40 years was not anticipated in any great detail. Extended storage periods on the order of 100 or more years as well as the changing materials used in high-burnup fuel are what I believe to be prompting this research.

    Hopefully the law can be amended to properly account for on-site storage of spent fuel such that the cost is borne by the utility customer rather than being spread out among the taxpayers in order to add some clarity to the process of going forward to ultimately dispose of spent nuclear fuel.

  • Yes I agree..the new cask will remain at the power station at the end of
    the day. The two interim storage sites and the 2048 repository seem to
    be up in the air with the present administration.

  • Dawn Koleva Dawn Koleva 10 months ago

    There will NEVER be a national spent fuel repository, way too much political opposition. Unless we find a way to actually USE this stuff, it’s going to keep piling up at nuclear plants until we’re buried in it. So I know that they have a way to recycle the uranium and plutonium, but what about the rest? Is there any use for it? I heard about a company called Perpetual Geoponics that was building a generator that used what was called a “concentrated form” of spent fuel but I can’t get any more information about it. Have any of you heard of this?