An Estimate of the Amount of Out-of-pool Storage Requirements for the Period 1992-2036

The estimates of requirements for additional storage capacity for spent nuclear fuel from commercial LWRs in the United States are examined in this study. A comparison of this study's findings on out-of-pool storage requirements is made with previous findings from a series of these studies dating back to 1987. The additional out-of-pool storage requirements estimates made in this study cover the period from the present (end of 1991) through the year 2036 and assume no spent fuel acceptance by the Department of Energy's (DOE) Civilian Radioactive Waste Management System (CRWMS) during that period, although it is the DOE's objective to begin accepting spent fuel in 1998. The objective of this study is to predict the out-of-pool storage requirements and then to evaluate the impacts of these requirements. Additionally, the objective is to identify trends and to try to predict their effects. The overall trend over the last several years has been toward lower out-of-pool storage requirements. However, this trend was reversed again this year because of a change in the DOE Energy Information Adminstration's (EIA) spent fuel projection methodology.