Management of Spent Nuclear Fuel Dry Storage in Taiwan

One of the high-priority issues for sustaining the operation of nuclear power stations (NPS) is how to manage and store the spent nuclear fuel safely. In the past few years, interim dry storage of spent nuclear fuel followed by reprocessing or geological disposal is the most favorable option and has become an acceptable alternative worldwide as well as in Taiwan for extending the storage capacity of spent nuclear fuel. Since July 2005, Taiwan Power Company (TPC) has been commissioning the Institute of Energy Research (INER) to establish the spent nuclear fuel dry storage facility at Chinshan NPS. The INER-HPS concrete cask storage system was developed by means of technology transfer from NAC International. Each cask can store 56 BWR spent nuclear fuel assemblies. In order to meet the site-specific requestsrequirements, some modifications were made. The facility licensing will be issued in two phases: Construction Permit (based on the Preliminary Safety Analysis Report, PSAR) and Operating License (based on the Final Safety Analysis Report, FSAR). The application for Construction Permit was submitted in March 2007. To master the critical issues involved for licensing a site-specific ISFSI in Taiwan, the competent authority, Atomic Energy Council (AEC), not only organized a technical review team composed of experienced experts and scholars in various disciplines, but also completed two preliminary review studies for the original UMS system of NAC and the site-specific dry storage facility having similar geological features to Chinshan NPS. The verification and validation of computer codes used in various analyses of the facility design have to be reviewed first. Two confirmatory evaluations have been carried out regarding the safety concern of structural seismic analysis and radiation shielding design. Technical consultations from USA and Japan are remained to settle the unresolved safety issues. Licensing hearing is also required before issuing the Construction Permit. This paper gives an overview of the regulatory requirements and a review program for applying spent nuclear fuel dry storage facility in Taiwan.