Licensing program and public involvement of spent nuclear fuel dry storage in Taiwan

Most of the spent fuel pools at the nuclear power plants (NPPs) in Taiwan are almost full due to the insufficient capacity of spent fuel pools after 3 times rerackings for BWR units. To extend the storage capacity of spent nuclear fuel, Taiwan Power Company (TPC) has therefore begun the projects of spent nuclear fuel dry storage facility at Chinshan NPP and Kuosheng NPP since 2005 and 2013, respectively.The dry storage facility is licensed in two steps including construction and operating License. During the construction and operation of the facility, the Atomic Energy Council (AEC) will intensively inspect the facility for ensuring the public safety and environmental quality. In addition, public acceptance also plays an important role for implementing the dry storage program. In order to enhance the confidence of the public, AEC held a public hearing during construction licensing review and has carried out a public observation program in construction phase at Chinshan NPP.To assure the safety of the off-site transportation, TPC must have the approval of AEC and apply to the domestic transportation authority before shipping. The dry storage casks of Chinshan and Kuosheng were based on the NAC International products. In the future, TPC may consider using the NAC transport casks to ship the spent nuclear fuels.This paper gives an overview of the regulatory requirements, licensing review program, and public involvement for applying spent nuclear fuel dry storage facility in Taiwan. It also gives some description of the spent nuclear fuel off-site transported plan prepared by TPC.