UN 602 - Nuclear Fuel Waste Management

This course will examine the sources and management approaches to storage and disposal of various nuclear wastes with focus on spent fuel waste generated primarily from nuclear reactors, in particular CANDU reactor. Key components of waste management approaches include waste characterization, classification, processing, packaging, transportation, storage and final disposal of the waste in a suitable repository. The first part of the course will examine detailed approaches including regulatory framework to manage low-level and intermediate-level radioactive wastes and wastes from Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials. In the second half of the course, detailed considerations will be given to high-level radioactive spent nuclear fuel wastes. Presently, nuclear fuel waste management involves storage in water pools or dry storage containers at reactor sites. If the spent fuel is defined as waste, then permanent disposal at an appropriate deep geological site would be considered. The possible permanent disposal scenarios developed internationally will be discussed, with a primary emphasis on those potentially applicable in Canada. For this last topic, the design and fabrication of waste containers and the processes that could potentially lead to their failure, the properties of engineered barriers within the geological site, the essential geological features of the chosen site, and the computational modeling approaches used in site performance assessment calculations will be described. International experiences on regulatory and Community issues, resolutions, and examples of operating and planned nuclear waste storage and disposal facilities will be detailed. The course will also present through examples tools to arrive at preferred management options for selected non-fuel waste effluents.