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WIPP: Lessons in transportation safety
As part of a future consent-based approach by the federal government to site new deep geologic repositories for nuclear waste, local communities and states that are considering hosting such facilities are sure to have many questions. Currently, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico is the only example of such a repository in operation, and it offers the opportunity for state and local officials to visit and judge for themselves the risks and benefits of hosting a similar facility. But its history can also provide lessons for these officials, particularly the political process leading up to the opening of WIPP, the safety of WIPP operations and transportation of waste from generator facilities to the site, and the economic impacts the project has had on the local area of Carlsbad, as well as the rest of the state of New Mexico.
Jacob A. Hirschhorn, Jeffrey J. Powers, Ian Greenquist, Ryan T. Sweet, Jianwei Hu, Douglas L. Porter, Douglas C. Crawford
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 196 | Number 1 | October 2022 | Pages S123-S147
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2043539
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy’s Versatile Test Reactor (VTR) project is designing a new fast-spectrum test reactor. The VTR reference driver fuel design is sodium-bonded U-20Pu-10Zr (wt%) metallic fuel and HT-9 cladding. The BISON fuel performance code is being used to model the VTR driver fuel pin to evaluate the effects of differences between its design and the legacy designs that preceded it. This work summarizes ongoing efforts at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to benchmark BISON for VTR driver fuel analyses, including establishing metallic fuel performance code requirements for VTR applications and benchmarking BISON for VTR driver fuel analyses. Integral fuel pin predictions are compared to legacy calculations and post-irradiation examination data for 261 fuel pins irradiated at Experimental Breeder Reactor II and the Fast Flux Test Facility. The BISON predictions exhibit trends that are generally consistent with the legacy data. Burnup and temperature predictions were found to be more accurate than mechanical predictions such as radial cladding dilation, axial fuel elongation, and plenum pressure. Likely sources of error were identified for evaluation in future work.