Analysis of spent fuel from light water reactors

A detailed knowledge of the LWR inventory-imposed constraints on the heavy metal handling capability for the transport, storage, and disposal components of the overall waste system has been developed as part of a GA Technologies evaluation of a universal waste canister concept. A time-phased burnup and age distributions of the inventory through 2020 has been converted to time-phased inventory distributions for heat load, gamma, and neutron shielding sources through the use of relatively simple, but sufficiently accurate, equations. The inventory analysis has also included the initial fissile enrichment distribution studies and criticality analysis to assess the criticality constraints imposed by the inventory characteristics