Standardized canisters and their potential impact on an integrated waste management system

The potential development and deployment of a standardized canister system represents an opportunity for an integrated approach to address the storage, transportation, and disposal issues in an integrated waste management system (IWMS). However, this deployment has the potential for significant system-wide impacts regardless of timing and method of implementation. This paper describes an evaluation that investigates using standardized, triple-purpose (storage, transportation, and disposal) canisters within the IWMS. Specifically, this evaluation documents a quantitative comparison of the impacts of implementing standardized canisters against the status quo of continuing to load existing canisters that could be challenging to dispose of in a number of different geologic repository concepts being considered by the US Department of Energy. This evaluation focuses on spent nuclear fuel that (1) would be loaded into standardized canister systems at reactors or (2) would be transported to an interim storage facility in reusable, bolted-lid transportation casks and subsequently loaded into standardized canister systems. Specifically, the evaluation builds on previous work to gain a better understanding of (1) the impacts of leaving spent fuel pools open for extended periods of time to facilitate access to the fuel and (2) how updated concepts of packaging for disposal and associated costs impact the system-wide evaluation. For all standardized canister scenarios analyzed, the following observations can be drawn from this evaluation: (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 1% and 7% 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.