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Services

Engineering and Support

As with other industries, the nuclear industry relies on a cadre of service companies to assist with all stages of project development. Engineering and support services aid in ensuring reactor designs can be constructed efficiently and in compliance with relevant regulations. In addition, these service companies support the reactors through their operations with routine support and specialized support for maintenance and enhancements. While many of these service companies have existing experience in the nuclear sector, the suite of activities expands well beyond nuclear specific issues and can overlap with other industries.

Decommissioning

At a nuclear plant’s end of life, it must be decommissioned in accordance with Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) requirements. Costs of decommissioning are paid from a decommissioning trust that is funded either at the start of plant operations or during plant operations. The NRC requires licensees to regularly report on the status of their decommissioning funds to ensure adequacy. Once the decision has been made to decommission a nuclear plant, commonly the plant and the decommissioning fund are transferred to a third-party contractor to carry out the decommissioning activities.

Casks

Dry cask storage allows nuclear plants to store cooled, used fuel in storage casks until final disposition is available. These casks are regulated by the NRC and are designed with enhanced safety features to tolerate numerous accident scenarios. Suppliers of these cask storage systems navigate the necessary regulations to have their cask technologies certified and work with the plant operators to ensure solutions meet their needs.

Transportation

According to the NRC, more than 1,300 spent fuel shipments have been completed safely in the United States over the past 35 years. Most of the used fuel was shipped by rail. As a result of robust transportation container design and stringent safety measures, all of these used fuel shipments have been safely completed with no harmful release of radioactivity or environmental damage.
The transportation of used nuclear fuel in the United States is regulated by the NRC and DOT. The NRC approves the design, fabrication, use and maintenance of shipping containers and regulates security of the used fuel. DOT regulates the shipping routes and transportation conveyances.
In the United States, more than 80,000 metric tons of used nuclear fuel are stored at 73 nuclear reactor sites and four DOE facilities in 35 states. This amount increases by about 2,000 metric tons each year. More than 2,700 used fuel storage containers are currently in service at these reactor sites. Most of these are designed to be transportable and their designers have either obtained, or intend to seek, licenses from the NRC for transport.

Repository

The nuclear industry handles nuclear waste safely and in compliance with the stringent requirements of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The NRC divides waste from nuclear plants into two categories: high-level and low-level. High-level waste is mostly used fuel. Low-level waste includes items like gloves, tools or machine parts that have been exposed to radioactive materials and makes up most of the volume of waste produced by plants.
Low-level radioactive waste is collected and transported safely to one of four disposal facilities in South Carolina, Washington, Utah or Texas. Some low-level waste can be stored at the plant until its stops being radioactive and is safe to be disposed of like normal trash.
A permanent disposal site for high-level waste has been planned for Yucca Mountain, Nevada, since 1987. This proposal has been found to meet NRC’s and EPA’s stringent safety and environmental regulations. Nevertheless, the project remains stalled by lack of funding from Congress. Whether it is at Yucca Mountain or some other location, DOE will transport and dispose of all U.S. commercial used fuel. All major nuclear countries in the world are pursuing similar disposal sites. Finland is in the lead with a site licensed and under construction. Consolidated interim storage sites also have been proposed so that used fuel can be more efficiently managed until a disposal site becomes available.

Reprocessing

With next generation advanced reactors under development, many developers are looking at a suite of recycling technologies, beyond current approaches, that could potentially allow for greater use of the energy in used fuel. There are a wide range of innovative advanced reactor designs being considered and each would call for different feedstock strategies. There also are developing technologies that would extract valuable radioisotopes (e.g., for medical purposes) from used fuel. In both cases, feedstock could be produced by recycling used fuel of all types discharged from current light water reactors or—in the future—used fuel from advanced reactors. The U.S. Department of Energy has entered into several agreements with developers to fund research and development of these recycling technologies. However, it is important to note that reprocessing used nuclear fuel does not replace the need for a geologic repository.