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Latest News
Retrieval of nuclear waste canisters from a borehole
Borehole disposal of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level waste (HLW) uses off-the-shelf directional drilling technology developed and commercialized by the oil and gas sectors. It is a technology that has been gaining traction in recent years in the nuclear industry. Disposal can be done in one or more boreholes (including an array) drilled into suitable sedimentary, igneous, or metamorphic host rocks. Waste is encapsulated in specialized corrosion-resistant canisters, which are placed end to end in disposal sections of relatively small-diameter boreholes that have been cased and fluid-filled. After emplacement, the vertical access hole is plugged and backfilled as an engineered barrier.
H. Y. Khater, M. E. Sawan
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 21 | Number 3 | May 1992 | Pages 2051-2055
Safety, Recycling, and Waste Management | doi.org/10.13182/FST92-A30023
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Radioactivity induced in a typical fusion power reactor was calculated for all elements with atomic number Z ≤ 84 and for different irradiation times. It was shown that the shutdown activity varies widely with the duration of the irradiation time. In general, the activity induced by radionuclides with half-lives that are significantly longer than the period of irradiation increases with increasing the irradiation time. On the other hand, the level of activity generated by any radionuclide with a half-life which is significantly shorter than the reactor life-time reaches a peak early during irradiation and then may starts to drop to lower value before the end of irradiation. The severity of this peaking is determined by the destruction rate of the parent element. The activities generated by long-lived nuclides (important for waste management) in any fusion reactor with life time in the order of 30 years reach their peak values at end-of-life. In the mean time, using the activity and decay heat values generated by short and intermediate-lived radionuclides at the end of reactor life to represent the worst case values used in safety analyses related to a loss of coolant accident (LOCA) and accidental release of radioactive inventory might lead to a substantial underestimation of the results.