Storage of nuclear spent fuel: concepts and safety issues. Report written in response to a request from the French Parliamentary Inquiry Committee on the Safety and Security of Nuclear Facilities

In March 2018, the Chair of the Parliamentary Inquiry Committee on the Safety and Security of Nuclear Facilities, set up by the French National Assembly, requested the analysis of IRSN on the nuclear safety issues associated with a strategy for managing irradiated nuclear fuel (also known as spent fuel) based on the storage of that fuel only in a pool (or underwater so called wet storage) or also in dry storage facilities. Based on its expertise of fuel storage in France, as well as on the knowledge acquired in the framework of services that the Institute carried out abroad, IRSN has made a review of the existing concepts of spent fuel storage worldwide and in France. The Institute also made a review of the associated safety issues, taking into account the characteristics of different types of fuel and the various types of storage (wet or dry, on-site or centralized).