Sebastian Reinicke presents the experimental infrastructure created in the research project "Fundamental F& E workon methods for condition monitoring of transport and storage casks for spent fuel elements and heat-generating high-level radioactive waste in extended interim storage (DCS monitor)".
Background:
Due to the ongoing search for a site for the final disposal of high-level radioactive waste in Germany, spent fuel elements must be temporarily stored at the nuclear power plant sites for longer periods of time. At present, it is not sufficiently known whether the integrity of the fuel elements can be lost over a period of several decades, for example due to pressure build-up caused by the formation of gaseous decay products. Extrapolative modeling of radiochemical and thermomechanical material behavior is very difficult. For this reason, there is interest in methods for non-invasive determination of the condition of fuel assemblies in the transport and storage casks.
Objective:
The overall objective of the project is to evaluate various physical measurement principles, procedures and methods for non-invasive monitoring of the condition of the inventory of transport and storage casks during extended interim storage. The aim is to identify ways of detecting changes in the fuel assemblies or the cask structures over very long periods of several decades without opening the casks. With a suitable procedure or a combination of procedures, an important contribution could be made to the long-term safety of highly radioactive waste in interim storage, as such a procedure would make it possible to make statements about the transport and conditioning capability of the waste before it is transferred to the repository.
The joint DCS-Monitor project is funded by the BMWi.
Contact
Director Institute of Process Engineering, Process Automation and Metrology (IPM)
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Alexander Kratzsch
Phone: 03583 612 4282
E-Mail: a.kratzsch(at)hszg.de