Abstract
This paper describes an evaluation that investigates using standardized, triple-purpose (storage, transportation, and disposal) canisters within the integrated waste management system (IWMS). Incorporation of a standardized canister system into the commercial waste management system represents an opportunity to develop an integrated approach to storage, transportation, and disposal issues . However, regardless of timing and method, deployment of such a system would have the potential to cause significant system-wide impacts. Over the past few years, the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Nuclear Energy (NE) has performed a number of system analyses using logistic simulations to evaluate the impacts of incorporating these smaller canisters into the commercial waste management system. These simulations predict the amount of resources (e.g., staff, canisters/casks, railcars, facilities), the size of facilities, and the timing of operations, as well as provide rough order-of-magnitude cost estimates.
For all standardized canister scenarios analyzed, the following observations can be drawn:
(1) Beginning to load standardized canisters either before or when a repository concept is selected would reduce the total life cycle cost of the system by between 2% and 8% when compared with the current “business as usual” approach of continuing to load large, dual-purpose canisters (DPCs), assuming that disposal of DPCs is determined to be unfeasible.
(2) The total system life cycle costs are relatively insensitive to the location in which the standardized canisters would be loaded.
(3) In some scenarios, repository costs would be close to 60% of the total system life cycle rough order of magnitude costs and would increase if smaller-capacity canisters were disposed of in a repository that could accommodate larger canisters.
(4) The transportation costs would be no more than 6% of total system life cycle costs (including at-reactor, transportation, interim storage, packaging for disposal, and repository costs) in any scenario analyzed in this evaluation.
In addition to system analyses, DOE funded efforts to develop a generic design of a small-capacity standardized canister system and investigate innovative operational approaches to minimize the at-reactor operational impacts of loading such smaller canisters. A result of this work was the development of a “canister-in-carrier” concept that would allow for loading, storing, transporting, and potentially disposing of groups of small canisters at the same time. With the inclusion of this new concept, the system analyses show that incorporating standardized canister systems into the commercial waste management system has the potential for some system-wide cost reductions in addition to the flexibility that smaller canisters would provide to the system. It should be noted that not all system functions saw a cost reduction, but the system as a whole was slightly less expensive.
Based on these analyses, the authors of this paper recommend that DOE fund (1) a demonstration of the ability to weld up to four small canisters at the same time to confirm the feasibility and practicality of the canister-in-carrier concept and (2) the development of a more detailed conceptual design for future applications for Certificates of Compliance, if standardized canisters were incorporated into the commercial waste management system.
