Waste streams and emissions, other than spent fuel, and subsequent environmental impact from the operation of SMRs could significantly differ from those from the current water-cooled reactors, particularly for the SMRs with combinations of novel fuel and coolant. Logically, the SMRs will use distinct process systems, and will likely simplify the ways of normal and outage operation of nuclear plants. These SMR technologies assert substantially improved reactor safety over large contemporary plants, because of their small reactor sizes, capability and effectiveness of the passive safety systems, and mitigation or elimination of the entire accident categories of water-cooled reactors by using novel fuel forms and (or) novel coolants.
The technologies under the pre-licensing VDR include high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGR), molten salt reactors (MSR), and lead-cooled fast reactors (LFR). Many SMR developers have initiated prelicensing vendor’s design review (VDR) with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. With many small communities and mining operations in its vast northern regions, Canada appears to be an ideal country for commercial deployment of SMRs. Small modular reactors (SMRs) that are defined to have the power equivalency of <300 megawatt electricity (MWe) are suitable for off-grid energy applications and supplying energy to small communities in remote areas. The introduction of SMRs presents both opportunities and challenges to Canadian waste management practices and regulations. The inventories of new wastes could become large if this technology achieves wide deployment. These may be substantial additions to the current waste inventories, as Canada has only small volumes of similar wastes from past activities. g−1 of radionuclides of radiotoxicity groups 2 and 3, would fall under the high-level waste category.
However, waste salts containing fission products from processing of spent molten salt fuel, which will have activities of >1 × 10 7 Bq Most wastes are characterised as having high heat generation and hazardous constituent, and may be classified as intermediate-level waste.
The primary identified radioactive wastes include halide salts and halogen off-gases from MSR and its fuel cycle, graphite and dusts in gaseous streams from HTGR, and lead from LFR. Characteristic, nonfuel waste streams from 3 SMRs are assessed using design data available in the public domain, to understand potential waste challenges.
0 kommentar(er)
