Safe Controlled Storage of SVBR-100 Spent Nuclear Fuel in the Extended-Range Future

Abstract

Experience of operating reactor facilities (RF) with lead-bismuth coolant (LBC) has revealed that it is possible to perform safe refueling in short terms if the whole core is replaced and a kit of the special refueling equipment is used. However, comparing with RFs of nuclear submarines (NS), in which at the moment of performance of refueling the residual heat release is small, at RF SVBR-100 in a month after the reactor has been shut down, at the moment of performance of refueling the residual heat release is about 500 kW. Therefore, it is required to place the spent removable unit (SRU) with spent fuel subassemblies (SFSA) into the temporal storage tank (TST) filled with liquid LBC, in which the conditions for coolant natural circulation (NC) and heat removal via the tank vessel to the water cooling system are provided. After the residual heat release has been lowered to the level allowing transportation of the TST with SRU in the transporting-package container (TPC), it is proposed to consider a variant of TPCs transportation to the special site. On that site after the SRU has been reloaded into the long storage tank (LST) filled with quickly solidifying liquid lead, the TPCs can be stored during the necessary period. Thus, the controlled storage of LSTs is realized during several decades untill the time when SNF reprocessing and NFC closing are becoming economically expedient. On that storage, the four safety barriers are formed on the way of the release of radioactive products into the environment, namely: fuel matrix, fuel element cladding, solid lead and steel casing of the LST.

Lead-Bismuth and Lead as Coolants for Fast Reactors

“…The possibility of safe "freezing-unfreezing" of LBE while maintaining the operability of the equipment is also important to ensure the transportation of modular small-power RF with loaded fuel and solid LBE (nuclear "battery") and long-term storage of SNF (Ref. [8]).…”