Burning of MOX fuels in LWRs; Fuel history effects on thermal properties of hull and end piece wastes and the repository performance

Hirano, Fumio ; Sato, Seichi*; Kozaki, Tamotsu*; Inagaki, Yaohiro*; Iwasaki, Tomohiko*; Oe, Toshiaki*; Kato, Kazuyuki*; Kitayama, Kazumi*; Nagasaki, Shinya*; Niibori, Yuichi*

The thermal impacts of hull and end piece wastes from the reprocessing of MOX spent fuels burned in LWRs on repository performance were investigated. The heat generation rates in MOX spent fuels and the resulting heat generation rates in hull and end piece wastes change depending on the fuel histories including the burn-up of UO spent fuels, the cooling period before reprocessing, the storage period of fresh MOX fuels. The heat generation rates of hull and end piece wastes from the reprocessing of MOX spent fuels with any of those histories are significantly larger than those from UO spent fuels with burn-ups of 45 GWd/THM. If a temperature below 80C is specified for cement-based materials used in waste packages after disposal, the allowable number of canisters containing compacted hull and end pieces in a package for 45 GWd-MOX needs to be limited to a value of 0.7 to 1.6, which is significantly lower than the value of 4.0 for 45 GWd-UO.