Criticality safety criteria for license review of low-level waste facilities

Abstract

The handling and burial of specified quantities of special nuclear material (SNM) at low-level-waste (LLW) facilities require a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). With assistance from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) staff, the NRC Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, Low-Level-Waste and Decommissioning Projects Branch, has developed technical specifications for the nuclear criticality safety of {sup 235}U and {sup 239}Pu in LLW facilities. The objective of the development of these technical specifications was to establish a set of review criteria that are rigorously defensible that can be applied uniformly to all license applications, and that conservatively ensures that buried SNM will not pose a criticality safety concern.