Progress on Nuclear Waste Management

FLUKA study of the actinides induced irradiation damage in Zircaloy-4 cladding during interim dry storage

“…After several years of service in a Light Water Reactor (LWR) and successive cooling in a water pool, spent nuclear fuel (SNF) assemblies are loaded into shielded storages casks or dual purpose casks for interim dry storage in several countries such as Belgium, Czech Republic, Germany, Lithuania, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine or United States of America [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] . During storage, the SNF experiences auto-irradiation and helium accumulation [14,15] caused by the alpha decays of the actinides present, in particular, at the periphery of the pellet.…”