Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology

An estimation has been made for inventories and characteristics of spent nuclear fuel(SNF) to be generated from existing and planned nuclear power plants based on the 3rd Basic Plan for Electric Power Demand and Supply. The characteristics under consideration in this study are dimensions, a fuel rod array, a weight, 235U enrichment, and the discharge burnup in terms of fuel assembly. These are essentially needed for designing a pyroprocessing facility. It is appeared that the anticipated quantity by the end of 2077 is about 23,000 tU for PWR spent nuclear fuel. It is revealed that the proportion of SNF with the initial 235U enrichment below 4.5 weight percent(wt.%) is approximately 95 % in total. For SNF with 16 16 fuel rod array the proportion is expected approximately 74% in total. It appears that the average burnup of SNF will be 55 GWd/tU after the medium and/or latter part of 2010s while the average burnup is 45 GWd/tU at present. Finally, a requirement in terms of reference SNF for designing the pyroprocessing facility has been derived from the above-mentioned results. The anticipated SNF seems to be 16 16 Korean Standard Fuel Assembly with a cross section of 21.4 cm 21.4 cm, a length of 453 cm, a mass of 672 kg, the initial 235U enrichment of 4.5 wt.%, and the discharge burnup of 55 GWd/tU

Keywords

spent nuclear fuel,discharge burnup,pyroprocessing facility,design