Reply #307: re-racking

[divvy]

My concern about Japan is the amount of spent fuel that appears to be stored on site. In a 2010 TEPCO report they outlined their plans to "re-rack" spent fuel in order to store more on site. The options are limited when there is no place for long term storage.

The problem I see with the re-racking plan centers on the amount of water there is in a spent fuel pool. Increasing the heat load in the pool will require increasing the heat removal capacity of the sytstem. A kidney-loop that circulated a thousand gallons per minute to cool a certain amount of fuel could fail sooner during a loss of power event.

There would be increased evaporation and decreased time.

The second area of concern for me centers on Xxxx's observation "what if the site becomes uninhabitable"

The risk in this case would span the entire fuel inventory.

Is there a regulation which govens the ratio of heat to gallons in a spent fuel pool? Without AC power, this ratio would be critical.