Year
1996
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to provide an estimate of the ALARA benefits and the reduction in numbers of shipments of spent nuclear fuel that would be achieved with nonutiorrn loading of casks, as compared to very similar casks designed and certified using current uniform-loading assumptions. A previous paper ‘1)evaluated the benefits of non-uniform loading for a 2-PWR station that was known to be discharging spent fiel with above-average discharge burnups. This paper expands that prior analysis to an assessment of non-uniform loading benefits for the whole population of 118 US LWR power reactors, and also identifies the sensitivity of those benefits to various degrees of delay in transporting the fbel from these reactor sites. This paper includes: a brief comparison of the design bases for non-uniform and uniform loading of casks; a description of the approach and the assumptions underlying the analyses; and a description and discussion of the results of the work. The results described in this paper are for transportation casks, but the design approach and conclusions also apply to storage casks.