Radiation and the Japanese Nuclear Reactors (Nuclear Energy Institute - NEI)

Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) ^ | Updated 3/13/11 @ 3:30 p.m. EDT | Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI)

[sefarkas]

This is simply not true. There is a pool in the reactor building that is used for rod storage during refueling but long term storage is done at another location on another part of the campus. Since there was no refueling going on for units 1 or 3 there is no fuel stored in these pools.

In the Mark I containments, the top of the spent fuel pool is at the same level as the refueling floor. With the sheet-metal walls torn away, the spent fuel pool is "outside"; however, the pool is 23 feet deep down to the top of the fuel bundles kept there. Note that the Japanese re-cycle used fuel; thus, there would not necessarily be as many fuel bundles in the pool as you would find in an American Mark I containment. New/unburned fuel is also kept in the "spent fuel pool" awaiting the next refueling outage. It is the spent fuel bundles with the decaying fission products that creates the 'residual heat' that the spent fuel pool cooling system has to remove. Other containment designs, particularly the ones for PWRs (e.g., Westinghouse, Combustion Engineering) have a separate 'fuel handling building' in which they keep spent fuel bundles. The location of the spent fuel pool is plant specific.