Integration of the Back-end of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle: An Overview

Diaz-Maurin, François; Ewing, Rodney C.

doi:10.1557/adv.2020.101

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…To be effective, an integrated nuclear waste management strategy in the U.S. requires to be defined across the various local, state and national levels (Bonano et al, 2018;Rechard et al, 2015). Ideally, adopting a multi-scale integrated analysis approach, a national strategy would be defined through an iterative process that works in parrallel-and in interaction-with many other processes tasked with finding solutions at the lower level (Diaz-Maurin and Ewing, 2020b). Here, we focus on developing a framework and method for their use in a single multi-criteria decision problem.…”

Section: Defining the Decision Problemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Socio-technical multi-criteria evaluation of nuclear waste management strategies: Introducing the method

Diaz-Maurin¹,

Yu²,

Ewing³

2020

Preprint

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In the absence of a federal geologic repository or consolidated, interim storage in the United States, commercial spent fuel will remain stranded at some 75 sites across the country. Currently, these include 18 "orphaned sites" where spent fuel has been left at decommissioned reactor sites. In this context, local communities living close to decommissioned nuclear power plants are increasingly concerned about this legacy of nuclear power production and are seeking alternative options to move the spent fuel away from those sites. In this paper, we present a framework and method for the socio-technical multi-criteria evaluation (STMCE) of spent fuel management strategies. The STMCE approach consists of (i) a multi-criteria evaluation that provides an ordinal ranking of alternatives based on a list of criterion measurements; and (ii) a social impact analysis that provides an outranking of options based on the assessment of their impact on concerned socio-technical actors. STMCE can handle quantitative, qualitative or both types of information. It can also integrate stochastic uncertainty on criteria measurements and fuzzy uncertainty on assessments of social impacts. We provide a numerical example to illustrate the outputs generated by the STMCE method using published data. The STMCE method provides a new way to compare nuclear waste management strategies and support the search for compromise solutions.

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Section: Defining the Decision Problemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Socio-technical multi-criteria evaluation of nuclear waste management strategies: Introducing the method

Diaz-Maurin¹,

Yu²,

Ewing³

2020

Preprint

Self Cite

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“…Worldwide, almost all national efforts since the 1980s to site deep geological repositories for highly-radioactive waste have encountered either public opposition or technical difficulties (US NWTRB, 2009). In the United States, despite plans for geological disposal, the back-end of the nuclear fuel cycle, so far, has not gone beyond the surface storage of spent fuel at the sites where it has been generated (Diaz-Maurin and Ewing, 2020a;Reset Steering Committee, 2018). This situation results in an increasing amount of spent fuel being stored in dry casks at many different spent fuel storage installations, all located at or near reactor sites.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Socio-technical evaluation of long-term spent nuclear fuel management options: The case of San Onofre, California

Diaz-Maurin¹,

Ewing²

2020

Preprint

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In the absence of a federal geologic repository or consolidated, interim storage in the United States, commercial spent fuel will remain stranded at some 75 sites across the country. Currently, these include 18 "orphaned sites" where spent fuel has been left at decommissioned reactor sites. In this context, local communities living close to decommissioned nuclear power plants are increasingly concerned about this legacy of nuclear power production and are seeking alternative options to move the spent fuel away from those sites. In this paper we use a newly proposed socio-technical multi-criteria evaluation (STMCE) framework and method for nuclear waste management strategies and apply it to the case of the decommissioned San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) in California. The case of SONGS illustrates the issues encountered for the longterm management of commercial spent fuel in the United States and how local communities attempt to participate in decision-making for plant decommissioning and spent fuel 2 management and disposal. The case study was conducted with a group of Stanford graduate students who helped test the method. The analysis presented in this paper corresponds to the first iteration of the STMCE framework that requires the participation of stakeholders. The STMCE framework brings together social and technical dimensions of analysis, as well as concerns for the social impact of feasible options. STMCE also provides a method consisting of mathematical procedures for the multi-criteria evaluation and social conflict analysis. The case study at SONGS provides insights on how coalitions of socio-technical actors can form and how compromise solutions can be identified to inform the policy decisions. We conclude by discussing the potential impact that such an approach could have on the management of commercial spent fuel in the United States.

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Socio-technical multi-criteria evaluation of long-term spent nuclear fuel management strategies: A framework and method

Diaz-Maurin

Ewing

2021

Science of The Total Environment

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Integration of the Back-end of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle: An Overview

Cited by 3 publications

References 19 publications

Socio-technical multi-criteria evaluation of nuclear waste management strategies: Introducing the method

Socio-technical multi-criteria evaluation of nuclear waste management strategies: Introducing the method

Socio-technical evaluation of long-term spent nuclear fuel management options: The case of San Onofre, California

Socio-technical multi-criteria evaluation of long-term spent nuclear fuel management strategies: A framework and method

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