Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation

USA / California / San Clemente / Pacific Coast Highway, 5000
 radioactive, nuclear waste storage
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"Temporary" storage of spent fuel produced by Units 1, 2 & 3 at SONGS. After fuel soaks in the Spent Fuel Pools (adjacent to each containment dome, closer to 5fwy) for a considerable amount of time, it's decay is at a level where it's cooling can be carried out by regular air.

Fuel Rod Assemblies are comprised of fuel rod bundles and control rods.

The fuel is made up of small uranium pellets, about as big as the end of a finger. These pellets are dense, ceramic materials placed end-to-end inside long metal tubes called fuel rods. The fuel rods are then grouped together in bundles, and arranged so that control rods can be placed between them.

Control rods are used to slow or stop the fission process. They are made with a substance that absorbs neutrons. Moving them in or out of the reactor controls the amount of heat being produced.
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Onofre_Nuclear_Generating_Station
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   33°22'14"N   117°33'28"W

Comments

  • Spent reactor fuel is a mixture of many many different elements and isotopes, all initially radioactive. The ones with the shortest lifetimes decay more quickly and their radioactivity becomes negligible, while the ones with longer lifetimes are less important initially but remain dangerous for correspondingly longer periods. After storage of a few years, the two most dangerous isotopes are cesium-137, a gamma-ray emitter with a half-life of about 30 years, and strontium-90, a beta emitter with a half-life of about 90 years. In ten half lives (~300 yr & 900 yr respectively) these will have decayed to 1/2^10 or about 1/1000th their initial activity. Nuclei formed by adding neutrons to the U fuel, especially plutonium, may have much longer lifetimes, up to 25,000 yr.
This article was last modified 13 years ago