NE 571 | Assignment 5A+B | Radioactive Waste

Learning objectives:

  1. Be able to classify high level and low level radioactive waste.
  2. Be able to identify transportation casks for different types of radioactive waste.
  3. Reflect on your learning process and identify ways in which you can more effectively engage with the course material.

Part A1 + A2 Due: Wed., March 7th 8am. – 33 points in total

Part A.1: Tsoufanidis – 30 points in total

  • Problems 9.1, 9.9, 9.10, 9.11, 9.12, 10.3, 10.6. – 4-5 points per problem.

Part A.23 points

  • Describe your learning process this week. What did you spend time on and in what order?
  • What might you do differently next week to more effectively engage with the course material?

Part B Due: Fri., March 9th at 6pm.  – 20 points total.

Part B includes collection, representation, and analysis of spatial data. This exercise serves as a small example for your class final project [draft] that will include the same kind of analyses as the one performed here.

This part of the assignment should take an hour to complete, on average. If you find that you’ve spent an hour and still have a lot of work to do on the assignment, please contact me, Josie, or Robert to discuss how to most efficiently complete your assignment. You definitely should not spend more than two hours overall on Assignment 5B.

You are provided with the datasets for input into ArcGIS here, along with some discussion of the meaning and the sources of the data. Please represent the following information on a map of the US:

  1. There are four low-level waste (LLW) disposal facilities in the US that accept LLW Class A, B, and C from specific state compacts (Barnwell and Richland), or from all states (Clive and Andrews). The facilities are all in agreements states, which allows the state to regulate the radioactive material, rather than the NRC. There are also four closed LLW sites, in Beatty, NV, Sheffield, IL, Maxey Flats, KY and West Valley, NY. Map the four LLW operating facilities. – 1 pt.
  2. There is a proposed high-level waste repository site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada., which has submitted a license application to the NRC. This site was one of the three sites that had been selected in December 1984 as technically-viable sites for a HLW repository, along with Handford, WA and Deaf County, TX. Map the three proposed HLW sites. – 1 pt.
  3. Spent nuclear fuel (SNF) is stored in spent fuel pools or dry cask storage. There are a number of licensed dry cask designs. NRC site licenses for independent spent fuel storage installations (ISFSI) fall under two possible types: general or site-specific. All ISFSI operate independently of the nuclear plant, but the general license is for a dry-cask of a licensed design at a site already licensed to posses fuel to operate a nuclear plant, and a site-specific license does not require existing NRC licenses at the site. ISFSI sites can be at nuclear reactor sites, at decommissioned sites, or at other sites. Map the 75 ISFSI sites (including sites pursuing ISFSI applications). – 3 pt
  4. From 1983 to 2014, the electric utilities paid 0.1 cents/kWh produced from nuclear power plants into the Nuclear Waste Fund (NWF). This fee was part of a contract that the federal government entered into to provide ultimate disposal for SNF. A total of $30B dollars have been paid into the fund. The BRC report discusses the NWF in great detail. To date, the federal government has not provided an ultimate disposal solution for SNF and spent fuel fees are no longer being collected from electric utilities. All SNF is currently being stored in spent fuel pools at operating plant sites, or at ISFSI. The NEI has compiled a list of stored SNF by state (in tons of U) and amount of fees paid into the NWF by state (in $M). Map the stored SNF amount by state, for the 35 states that are currently storing SNF – 3 pt.
  5. Interim storage facilities were essentially not allowed by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA) and its 1987 amendments; they were capped at maximum capacity of 1900 metric ton. The Blue Ribbon Commission of 2010 (BRC) recommended the authorization of interim storage facilities. I highly recommend reading the executive summary and the table of contents of the BRC Report – it is a well written overview of contemporary challenges in nuclear waste management and you may find inspiration in it for your final class project. At the moment there have been two license submissions to the NRC for consolidated interim storage facilities (CISF): Waste Control Specialists in 2016, and Holtec International in 2017. Map the two proposed CISF.  – 1 pt.

Once you’ve generated your map, please display it on your blog, and answer the following questions:

  1. What patterns do you see in your spatial data that are surprising? – 4 pt
  2. What additional data would you collect to make this an informative map to nuclear engineering students about radioactive waste management in the US? – 7 pt.
  3. Bonus points (up to 20 pts): you can generate similar maps and analysis for another country, or at the global scale.

Resources

  1. Post questions under #ne571-assignments. Ask questions after class.
  2. See #ne571-general channel (March 1st post, 11:06 AM) for information access to ArcGIS and Illustrator.
  3. See this tutorial on Choropleth for how to generate shaded map areas that correlate to an input variable (useful for part B4). This will help with representation of the SNF by state data and will potentially reduce label clutter. It will also teach you a new  mapping tool.
  4. Crash Course on Illustrator.

 

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