Interim Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel - Woods Hole Research Center

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secure, and cost-effective options for storing the spent fuel
generated by the world’s power reactors for decades, or for
much shorter periods of time, as circumstances warrant.
These interim storage possibilities will allow time for permanent
options for management and disposal of spent fuel
and nuclear wastes to be prepared and implemented with
the care they require. Interim storage of spent fuel can
also allow time for spent fuel management technology
to improve, and for the economic, environmental, and
security advantages of different approaches to permanent
management of spent fuel and nuclear wastes to become
clearer.
There is an urgent need to provide increased interim
storage capacity in the United States, Japan, and
around the world. Failure to meet this challenge
could have serious economic, environmental, and
energy-security consequences.
The spent fuel cooling ponds at nuclear reactors in many
countries around the world are filling up. Delays in both
reprocessing and geologic disposal programs have left reactor
operators with far more spent fuel to manage than had
been expected when the nuclear plants were built. If additional
storage capacity does not become available—
whether at the reactors or elsewhere—reactors could be
forced to shut down well before the end of their licensed
lifetimes. Such a failure to provide adequate capacity to
store spent fuel could result in billions of dollars in economic
losses, reduced diversity in electricity supply, and
more consumption of fossil fuel, emitting additional pollutants
and greenhouse gases. Moreover, if the addition of
interim storage capacity is not managed appropriately,
increasing quantities of spent fuel could end up being
stored in less than optimal conditions, reducing safety.
Thus, providing additional spent fuel storage is important
not just to the interests of the nuclear industry, but to the
interests of society as a whole.
Interim storage is a key element of the fuel cycle—
regardless of whether the planned permanent option
is reprocessing or direct disposal.
Interim storage of spent nuclear fuel is not simply a matter
of postponing decisions. It is a central element of an optimized
nuclear fuel cycle—whether that fuel cycle approach
will ultimately involve direct disposal or reprocessing of the
spent fuel. While there continue to be strong differences of
INTERIM STORAGE OF SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL
opinion over whether spent fuel should be regarded as a
waste or a resource—and there is some merit in each
view—a consensus is emerging that interim storage of
spent fuel is an important strategic option for fuel management,
which can be pursued by supporters of both open
and closed fuel cycles.
Interim storage is a complement, not an alternative,
to moving forward expeditiously with permanent
approaches to managing spent fuel and nuclear
waste.
Interim storage, by its nature, is a temporary solution,
designed to be safe and secure during a defined period
when humans and their institutions are monitoring it. It is
not a substitute for a permanent approach to the nuclear
waste problem designed to provide safety for hundreds of
thousands of years. Interim storage approaches should be
carefully designed to avoid undermining funding and political
support for continued progress toward acceptable permanent
solutions for spent fuel management and radioactive
waste disposal. Regardless of how much interim
storage is provided, facilities for permanent disposal of
nuclear wastes will be needed, whether those facilities are
intended to hold spent fuel, wastes from reprocessing spent
fuel, or both, and interim storage approaches should not be
allowed to undermine efforts to develop such facilities.
Interim storage should not become a mechanism for this
generation to simply leave problems to the next; hence, it is
important to make continued progress toward permanent
solutions (and a set-aside of sufficient funding to implement
them) a part of any interim storage strategy. Indeed,
continued visible progress toward the establishment of
such permanent waste facilities—providing some confidence
that “interim” facilities will not become “permanent”—is
likely to be essential to gaining political acceptance
for the establishment of adequate interim storage
capacity.
Flexibility is crucial to safe, secure, and acceptable
management of spent nuclear fuel—and interim storage
is crucial to providing such flexibility.
The history of the nuclear age is filled with cases in which
billions of dollars were wasted on projects that seemed to
make sense when first started, and to which countries
became “locked in,” but which were no longer what was
needed years later. The economics of different energy