Design study of a modular dry storage facility for typical PWR spent fuel

A design study has been carried out for a modular, passively cooled dry storage facility for the spent fuel of a typical PWR. Each facility module has design capacity of a full reload-fuel batch for a 1000 MWth plant. It is shielded by a re-enforced concrete structure. The 102.48 W generated decay heat per module, is removed by natural convection of air flowing at 0.43 m/s and having exit temperature 229 °C which is favorably lower than the international norm of 380 °C. In the worst case scenario of completely flooded module, WIMS-D/4 and CITATION based two-dimensional diffusion theory analysis yields keff = 0.8 which is 11.11% lower than standard safe upper-limit. The proposed modular dry storage facility, with a passively cooled safe design and easy extensibility, offers economically viable solution to the problem of plants running out of on-site as well as interim wet storage capacity.