Safeguarding Spent Fuel Storage and Final Disposal Activities

In Germany, the Atomic Energy Act provides for the spent fuel generated by nuclear power reactors to be reprocessed, if this is technically safe and economically viable. Thus the major share of used fuel from the German reactors is brought to reprocessing. The fuel recovered in this process is intended to be recycled into suitable reactors. The actual reprocessing is carried out abroad, in preference to a domestic solution, and the residues returned to Germany. In parallel, a concept for the direct disposal of spent fuel has been drawn up and is currently being developed up to industrial standard. The facilities in the fuel cycle backend in Germany comprise, thus, away-from-reactor (AFR) stores, a pilot conditioning facility and final repositories. In 1990, the 20 German reactors /!/, with a combined gross capacity of approximately 22 GWe, provided a power output of some 147.200 GWh. This corresponds to a share of about 38 % of the electricity generated last year. These figures do not include the reactors situated in the former GDR, which are no longer in operation. The spent fuel unloaded amounted to almost 500 t HM. Over the next years, the amount of fuel unloaded will be in the region of 450 to 500 t HM p.a.. The major part of this is firmly contracted for reprocessing in France and the United Kingdom until the year 2015. Conditioned reprocessing waste will be returned and stored in final repositories, with an expected number, exceeding 50.000, of non-heat-generating packages in the A certain amount of used fuel, corresponding to the annual throughput of the pilot conditioning facility, -r.11 be set aside each year for conditioning.