Nuclear safetyNuclear Waste Storage Canisters to Be Tested

Sandia National Laboratoriesis outfitting three 22.5-ton, 16.5-feet-long stainless-steel storage canisters with heaters and instrumentation to simulate nuclear waste so researchers can study their durability.

The three canisters, which arrived in mid-November and have never contained any nuclear materials, will be used to study how much salt gathers on canisters over time. Sandia will also study the potential for cracks caused by salt- and stress-induced corrosion with additional canisters that will be delivered during the next stage of the project.

Currently there is not an operating geologic repository in the U.S. for the permanent disposal of spent nuclear fuel. As a result, spent fuel is being stored at commercial nuclear power plants in both storage pools and dry storage canisters. The storage canisters currently holding the spent nuclear fuel were designed to have a useful life of a few decades but will now likely need to be used longer than planned, said Tito Bonano, Sandia’s nuclear energy fuel cycle senior manager.

Data is urgently needed to validate and guide how industry should manage storage canisters for longer than originally anticipated, Bonano said.

“Salt can be present in the ambient air and environment anywhere, not just near the ocean. We need to be able to plan for extended long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel at nuclear power plants for the foreseeable future — it’s a national reality,” he said.

The researchers expect the project could have long-reaching implications for public health and safety, industry practices, regulatory framework and defining future research paths, said Bonano.

The three-year project is funded by the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy office. Overall, fifteen never-used, never-irradiated DOE-owned canisters are being distributed for large scale testing to Sandia and two other national laboratories, an industry research institute and an independent storage facility at an existing nuclear power plant.

Waste from Nuclear Fuel Must Be Stored for More Than a Million Years
Nuclear power plants use uranium pellets inside a metal-cladded tube, called a fuel rod, to power reactors to create the heat needed to make electricity. After the fuel rods can no longer be used in the reactor, they need to be stored onsite until they are taken offsite to another facility and eventually permanently disposed because they will be radioactive for a long time, said Samuel Durbin, a mechanical engineer and Sandia’s canister project lead.

“When fuel is removed from a reactor, it’s very hot, both in temperature and radioactivity” Durbin said. “The utility loads