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Center for Used Fuel Research: Building confidence in storage and transport
Used nuclear fuel storage and transportation have reached a critical juncture.
Dozens of utilities need reliable data on how used nuclear fuel performs in dry storage casks and canisters to extend regulatory licenses at sites across the United States. Likewise, the Department of Energy expects to take ownership of the used nuclear fuel—termed “spent nuclear fuel” in the laws and regulations governing its stewardship—and transfer it to one or more federal staging facilities for management and disposition.
Meanwhile, dozens of reactor companies are testing prototypes of advanced reactors and advanced reactor fuels. Eventually, regulators and industry must also verify the safety and security of storage methods for these advanced fuel types.
To help address these challenges, the DOE established the Center for Used Fuel Research (CUFR) in January 2026 for work related to the long-term storage and transport of used nuclear fuel.
Rei Kimura, Yuki Nakai, Tadafumi Sano, Atsushi Sakon, Satoshi Wada
Nuclear Technology | Volume 209 | Number 11 | November 2023 | Pages 1859-1866
Note | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2023.2212828
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An experiment was conducted that demonstrates a novel core power distribution reconstruction method based on ex-core detectors using time-dependent measurement at the University Teaching and Research Reactor of Kindai University (UTR-KINKI). Although the proposed method PHOEBE was able to identify the power distribution change caused by control rods under static conditions in a previous experiment, time-dependent experiments were not conducted. Hence, the present study measured time-dependent neutron counts using ex-core detectors to reconstruct the power distribution based on PHOEBE. Extraction of the control rods was expected to cause a shift in the reactor power distribution from the north side to the south, and the results of the power distribution reconstruction also demonstrated this power shift. This result experimentally and qualitatively demonstrated the detection of time-dependent power shifts based on PHOEBE. However, quantitative verification was difficult in this study because there are no verified time-dependent three-dimensional neutronics codes available. This issue will be addressed in a future study when a code becomes available.
