• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.411-422
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• 2016

Recently, because the wet pool storage facilities of NPPs in Korea has become saturated, there has been much active R&D on an interim dry storage system using a transportation and storage cask. Generally, the shielding evaluation for the design of a spent fuel transportation and storage cask is performed by the design basis fuel, which selects the most conservative fuel among the fuels to be loaded into the cask. However, the loading of actual spent fuel into the transportation metal cask is not limited to the design basis fuel used in the shielding evaluation; the loading feasibility of actual spent fuel is determined by the shielding evaluation that considers the characteristics of the initial enrichment, the maximum burnup and the minimum cooling period. This study describes a shielding analysis method for determining the minimum cooling period of spent fuel that meets the domestic transportation standard of the dual purpose metal cask. In particular, the spent fuel of 3.0~4.5wt% initial enrichment, which has a large amount of release, was evaluated by segmented shielding calculations for efficient improvement of the results. The shielding evaluation revealed that about 81% of generated spent fuel from the domestic nuclear power plants until 2008 could be transported by the dual purpose metal cask. The results of this study will be helpful in establishing a technical basis for developing operating procedures for transportation of the dual purpose metal cask.

• 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.

• 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.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.435-443
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• 2016

This paper describes the development of a dry operation process for PWR spent nuclear fuel, which is currently stored in the domestic NPP's storage pool, using a dual purpose metal cask. Domestic NNPs have had experience with wet type transportation of PWR spent nuclear fuel between neighboring NPPs since the early 1990s, but no experience with dry type operation. For this reason, we developed a specific operation process and also confirmed the safety of the major cask components and its spent nuclear fuel during the dual purpose metal cask operation process. We also describe the short term operation process that was established to be completed within 21 hours and propose the allowable working time for each step (15 hours for wet process, 3 hours for drain process and 3 hours for vacuum drying process).

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.48 no.2
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• pp.505-517
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• 2016

The structural integrity of a dual-purpose metal cask currently under development by the Korea Radioactive Waste Agency (KORAD) was evaluated, through numerical simulations and a model test, under high-speed missile impact reflecting targeted aircraft crash conditions. The impact conditions were carefully chosen through a survey on accident cases and recommendations from literature. In the impact scenario, a missile flying horizontally hits the top side of the cask, which is freestanding on a concrete pad, with a velocity of 150 m/s. A simplified missile simulating a commercial aircraft engine was designed from an impact loade-time function available in literature. In the analyses, the dynamic behavior of the metal cask and the integrity of the containment boundary were assessed. The simulation results were compared with the test results for a 1:3 scale model. Although the dynamic behavior of the cask in the model test did not match exactly with the prediction from the numerical simulation, other structural responses, such as the acceleration and strain history during the impact, showed very good agreement. Moreover, the containment function of the cask survived the missile impact as expected from the numerical simulation. Thus, the procedure and methodology adopted in the structural numerical analyses were successfully validated.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.343-356
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• 2016

The Korea Radioactive Waste Agency (KORAD) has developed a dual-purpose metal cask for the dry storage of spent nuclear fuel that has been generated by domestic light-water reactors. The metal cask was designed in compliance with international and domestic technology standards, and safety was the most important consideration in developing the design. It was designed to maintain its integrity for 50 years in terms of major safety factors. The metal cask ensures the minimization of waste generated by maintenance activities during the storage period as well as the safe management of the waste. An activation evaluation of the main body, which includes internal and external components of metal casks whose design lifetime has expired, provides quantitative data on their radioactive inventory. The radioactive inventory of the main body and the components of the metal cask were calculated by applying the MCNP5 ORIGEN-2 evaluation system and by considering each component's chemical composition, neutron flux distribution, and reaction rate, as well as the duration of neutron irradiation during the storage period. The evaluation results revealed that 10 years after the end of the cask's design life, $^{60}Co$ had greater radioactivity than other nuclides among the metal materials. In the case of the neutron shield, nuclides that emit high-energy gamma rays such as $^{28}Al$ and $^{24}Na$ had greater radioactivity immediately after the design lifetime. However, their radioactivity level became negligible after six months due to their short half-life. The surface exposure dose rates of the canister and the main body of the metal cask from which the spent nuclear fuel had been removed with expiration of the design lifetime were determined to be at very low levels, and the radiation exposure doses to which radiation workers were subjected during the decommissioning process appeared to be at insignificant levels. The evaluations of this study strongly suggest that the nuclide inventory of a spent nuclear fuel metal cask can be utilized as basic data when decommissioning of a metal cask is planned, for example, for the development of a decommissioning plan, the determination of a decommissioning method, the estimation of radiation exposure to workers engaged in decommissioning operations, the management/reuse of radioactive wastes, etc.

• 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.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.141-154
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• 2015

In general, conventional criticality analysis for spent fuel transport/storage systems have been performed based on the assumption of fresh fuel concerning the potential uncertainties from number density calculations of actinide nuclides and fission products in spent fuel. However, these evaluation methods cause financial losses due to an excessive criticality margin. In order to overcome this disadvantage, many studies have recently been conducted to design and commercialize a transportation and storage cask applied to the Burnup Credit (BUC). This study conducted an assessment to ensure criticality safety for reactor operating parameters, axial burn-up profiles and misload accident conditions, which are the factors that are likely to affect criticality safety when the BUC is applied to the dual-purpose cask under development at the KOrea RADioactive waste agency (KORAD). As a result, it was found that criticality resulting from specific power, changed substantially and relied on conditions of low enrichment and high burn-up. Considering the end effect in the case of high burn-up produced a positive-definite result. In particular, the increment of maximum effective multiplication factors due to misloading was 0.18467, confirming that misload is a factor that must be taken into account when applying the BUC. The results of this study may therefore be utilized as references in developing technologies to apply the BUC to domestic models and operational procedures or preventing any misload accidents during the process of spent fuel loading.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.299-314
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• 2014

A lifting device is used to deal with transport cask for the transportation of spent fuels from nuclear power plants. This study performed theoretical analysis and numerical simulation to evaluate the structural integrity of the lifting device based on Nuclear Safety and Security Commission(NSSC) Notice No.2013-27 and US 10CFR Part 71 ${\S}71.45$. The results of theoretical analysis showed that the maximum stresses of all components were below the allowable values. This result confirmed that the lifting device was structurally safe during operation. The results of finite element analysis also showed that it was evaluated to satisfy the design criteria bothyielding and ultimate condition. All components have been shown to ensure the structural safety due to sufficient safety margins. In other words, the safety factor was 3 or more for the yielding condition and was 5 or more for the ultimate condition.