The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board will receive a day of presentations on management and disposal of commercial used nuclear fuel at its fall meeting Wednesday in Albuquerque, N.M.
The meeting is open to the public and will be webcast on the NWTRB website.
Congress in 1982 directed the Department of Energy to establish a permanent repository for spent fuel from the U.S. nuclear power reactors. The agency is more than two decades behind the Jan. 31, 1998, deadline to begin accepting what is now a stockpile of roughly 80,000 metric tons of radioactive waste. However, it continues to conduct research and development of methods to meet its mandate.
Following an introduction by Board Chair Jean Bahr, meeting participants will receive an update on the Energy Department’s spent fuel and waste disposition efforts from Bill Boyle, director of the Office of Used Nuclear Fuel Disposition Research and Development, Fuel Cycle Technologies in DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy.
That will be followed by two presentations from DOE national laboratory researchers on high-burnup spent nuclear fuel topics. Topics later in the day will cover transportation testing of spent fuel casks, DOE research and development of storage and transportation, and past and current studies on direct disposal on commercial spent nuclear fuel.
The meeting is scheduled to wrap up at 5:10 p.m.
The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board is an independent agency within the Executive Branch tasked with offering expert guidance to Congress and the secretary of energy on management of spent fuel and high-level waste.
