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Example of a spent fuel pool from the shut-down Caorso Nuclear Power Plant. This pool is not holding large amounts of material. Spent fuel pools (SFP) are storage pools (or "ponds" in the United Kingdom) for spent fuel from nuclear reactors. They are typically 40 or more feet (12 m) deep, with the bottom 14 feet (4.3 m) equipped with storage ...
Units 1 through 4 at the plant. At the time of the earthquake, Unit 4 had been shut down for shroud replacement and refueling since 29 November 2010. [1] [2] All 548 fuel assemblies had been transferred in December 2010 from the reactor to the spent fuel pool on an upper floor of the reactor building [3] where they were held in racks containing boron to damp down any nuclear reaction. [4]
Spent nuclear fuel stays a radiation hazard for extended periods of time with half-lifes as high as 24,000 years. For example 10 years after removal from a reactor, the surface dose rate for a typical spent fuel assembly still exceeds 10,000 rem/hour—far greater than the fatal whole-body dose for humans of about 500 rem received all at once. [15]
Kansai Electric, Japan's largest nuclear plant operator, is urgently seeking additional storage for spent fuel: the cooling pools at its plants are more than 80% full.
On 16 August 2011, TEPCO announced the installation of desalination equipment in the spent fuel pools of reactor 2, 3, and 4. These pools had been cooled with seawater for some time, and TEPCO feared the salt would corrode the stainless steel pipes and pool wall liners. The Unit 4 spent fuel pool was the first to have the equipment installed.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the need for alternative storage in the United States began to grow when cooling pools at many nuclear reactors began to fill with stored spent fuel. As there was not a national nuclear storage facility in operation at the time, utilities began looking at options for storing spent fuel. Dry cask storage was ...
It has 58 canisters holding 1,856 used fuel assemblies at its independent spent fuel storage installation. Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant on June 1, 2023. With no national repository, spent ...
As of early 2017, the project has not been shelved but it stays frozen and no further action is expected anytime soon. Meanwhile, the spent nuclear fuel and other high-level waste is being kept in the plants' pools, as well as on-site dry cask storage (almacenes temporales individualizados) in Garoña and Trillo.