Nuclear reactors under construction in Sanmen, Zhejiang province.[Photo/Xinhua]

The amount of spent fuel needed to be transported is likely to increase 20-fold in China by 2025 as the country embarks on a massive plan of building new nuclear power plants, senior officials say.

Zhu Ji, general manager of Lanzhou Nuclear Enrichment Co., a unit of China National Nuclear Corp., said a transport system of nuclear waste should be built in China, because there will be 1,000 tons of heavy metal, the product of spent nuclear fuel, within the next decade.

“China depends solely on roads to transport spent nuclear fuel for now, but that needs to be upgraded to a model that includes shipping and rail transport,” he said, hoping such system can be built by 2022.

Most nuclear power plants in China are located near the coast, but the used fuel storage site is near Gansu province, about 1,864 miles inland.

“Used nuclear fuel may be shipped only along specified highway routes, putting huge pressure on road transport and safe management of spent fuel rods,” Zhu said.

The spent rods need to remain in cooling pools for five to 10 years under at least 20 feet of actively circulating water.

Nuclear waste is the material that nuclear fuel becomes after it is used in a reactor. It looks similar to the fuel that was loaded into the reactor —assemblies of metal rods.

“If we put spent rods in cooling pools for eight years, then about 2,300 fuel assemblies … will have to be transported by 2025,” he said.

Until last year about 90,000 tons of used fuel from commercial power reactors had been reprocessed, the World Nuclear Association said.

It has forecast that about 400,000 tons of used fuel is expected to be generated worldwide from 2010 to 2030, including 60,000 tons in North America and 69,000 tons in Europe.

To reduce the reliance on uranium imports and the amount of used fuel, China is developing a fast-neutron reactor, corresponding to…

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