HTGR Knowledge Base

Conference Article: Experience with the interim storage of spent HTR fuel elements and a view to necessary measures for final disposal

Abstract

In the Federal Republic of Germany the AVR pilot high-temperature reactor was operated successfully for more than 20 years and the THTR prototype high-temperature reactor for more than three years. The reactors were shut down for decommissioning at the end of 1988 and the discharge of core inventories and packaging of the fuel, together with the temporarily stored fuel, for long-term interim storage in appropriate casks and facilities was started in 1992 and finished in 1995 for the THTR and began in 1994 for AVR and will be completed at the beginning of 1998. With a view to the long-term interim storage and final disposal of spent HTR fuel from both reactors many experiments have been carried out to characterize the spent fuel and to learn about its behaviour and during the operating period of the AVR reactor much experience has been gathered by remote handling, shipping and temporarily storing fuel packages at different appropriate facilities of the Forschungszentrum Juelich GmbH (FZJ). Furthermore, after starting the discharge of the AVR core more than 200 so-called AVR dry storage canisters (AVR-TLK), each containing 950 spent fuel elements have been reloaded from an AVR single shipping cask into CASTOR THTR / AVR shipping and storage casks in the hot cell facility, which is one part of the waste treatment and storage building of FZJ, and currently about 100 CASTOR casks, each containing in all 1900 fuel elements, have been prepared and stored in the AVR interim storage facility (AVR-BL), as another part of this building.

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Reference:

Technical committee meeting on technologies for gas cooled reactor decommissioning, fuel storage and waste disposal. Juelich (Germany) 8-10 Sep 1997

International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna (Austria)

IAEA-TECDOC--1043, pp:163-169