The cancellation of the Yucca Mountain repository program in the Unites States raises the prospect of very long-term storage (i.e., >120 years) and deferred transportation of used fuel at the nuclear power plant sites. While long-term storage of used nuclear fuel in dry cask storage systems (DCSSs) at Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installations (ISFSIs) is already a standard practice among U.S. utilities, recent rule-making activities of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) indicated additional flexibility for the NRC licensees of ISFSIs and certificate holders of the DCSSs to request initial and renewal terms for up to 40 years. The proposed rule also adds a requirement that renewal applicants must provide descriptions of aging management programs (AMPs) and time-limited aging analyses (TLAAs) to ensure that the structures, systems, and components (SSCs) that are important to safety in the DCSSs will perform as designed under the extended license terms. This paper examines issues related to managing aging effects on DCSSs for very long-term storage (VLTS) of used fuels, capitalizing on the extensive knowledge and experience accumulated from the work on aging research and life cycle management at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) over the last 30 years. The technical basis for acceptable AMPs and TLAAs is described, as are generic AMPs and TLAAs that are being developed by Argonne under the support of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Used Fuel Disposition Campaign for R&D on extended long-term storage and transportation.
A temperature-monitoring system based on radiofrequency identification (RFID) has been developed for extending the maintenance period of the nuclear material packaging for storage and transportation. The system consists of tags, readers, and application software. The tag, equipped with a temperature sensor, is attached to the exterior of a package. The application software enables remote reading, via radio waves, of the temperature from the sensor in the tag. The system reports any temperature violations immediately via e-mail or text message, and/or posts the alarm on a secure website. The system can monitor thousands of packages and record individual temperature histories in a database. The first type of packaging that will benefit from the RFID technology is Model 9977, which has been certified by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to ship and store fissile materials such as plutonium and uranium. The recorded data can be correlated to the temperature of the containment O-ring seals, based on the decay heat load of the contents. Accelerated aging studies of the Viton® GLT O-rings have shown that temperature is one of the key parameters governing the life of the O-ring seals, which maintain the integrity of the containment boundary of the package. Use of the RFID temperature-monitoring system to verify that the surface temperature remains below a certain threshold will make it possible to extend the leak-test period of the package from one year to up to five years. The longer leak-rate testing interval will yield a cost savings of up to $10,000 per package over five years. This work was conducted by Argonne National Laboratory in support of the DOE Packaging Certification Program, Office of Environmental Management, Office of Packaging and Transportation (EM-63).
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