2006 International RERTR Meeting

Abstracts and Available Papers Presented at the Meeting

Ten Years Experience Shipment of Spent Fuel From GKSS to the US under the FRRSNF Acceptance Program

A. Drawe, H. Häger, P. Schreiner,
GKSS-Research-Centre-Geesthacht GmbH
Max-Planck-Str. 1
D-21502 Geesthacht

ABSTRACT

Already in the 1980' GKSS-Research-Center decided to terminate operation of its two research reactors FRG-1 and FRG-2 on the HEU fuel cycle. This decision was made in acknowledgement of the aims of RERTR program, in which GKSS was a strong supporter from the beginning.

The FRG-2 (15 MW) has been used as Germany's largest material testing reactor for power reactor materials and safety test and has played an important rule in the conversion activities at the GKSS research centre. The FRG-2 was shutdown in 1991, therefore the conversion to LEU was not considered reasonable.

The FRG-1 (5MW) has been converted in February 1991 from HEU (93 %) to LEU (20%) in one step. Due to the unforeseeable termination of the take back policy of US-DOE in 1989 for spent HEU fuel elements there were from the former operation of the two reactors a large number of spent fuel elements to be stored at the reactor site. In 1996 the US initiated the Foreign Research Reactor Spent Nuclear Fuel acceptance program. Under this program GKSS has done 6 shipments with 141 spent HEU fuel elements and 150 spent LEU fuel elements to the US-DOE Savannah River.

In December 2005 the US-DOE and GKSS signed the contract "TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR THE ACCEPTANCE OF FOREIGN RESEARCH REACTOR SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL AT THE SAVANNAH RIVER SITE" for the extension up to 2016.

 

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