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The Importance of Criticality in the Safety Analysis of the Spent-Fuel Waste Container

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1992

William G. Culbreth  and
Paige Zielinski
William G. Culbreth
Affiliation:
Dept. of Civil and Environ. Engineering, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV 89154
Paige Zielinski
Affiliation:
Graduate Research Assistant
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Abstract

The storage of high-level spent reactor fuel in a proposed national geologic repository will require the construction of containers to be placed in boreholes drilled into the host rock. Federal regulations require that the fuel be maintained subcritical under normal or accident conditions. This is determined through the calculation of a neutron multiplication factor, keff, that must remain below 0.95. Criticality will play an important role in the container design, the internal configuration of the fuel, and the selection of neutron poisons. An analysis of keff should be a normal step in the conceptualization of new waste container designs. Unlike thermal effects in a proposed repository, criticality will remain a problem long after the 10,000 year lifetime of the facility.

Type
Research Article
Information
MRS Online Proceedings Library (OPL) , Volume 294: Symposium V – Scientific Basis for Nuclear Waste Management XVI , 1992 , 73
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 1993

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References

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