In the two-week trip to Okarshamm, Sweden, the students took Elements of the Back-End of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle: Geological Storage of Nuclear Spent Fuel (SH262V), which was intensive coursework devoted to spent nuclear fuel management. The students prepared for the trip by taking Adjunct Prof. William Roy’s class, NPRE 498, Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage in Bedrock, in Spring 2015.
Roy and NPRE Assistant Prof. Tomasz Kozlowski helped teach the Swedish course, which consisted of classroom lectures and field excursions. Intended to provide a comprehensive overview of spent nuclear fuel management emphasizing the site selection process for a deep geological repository, the course included trips to Clab (an interim geological repository for spent fuel), the Laxemar Site (study area for bedrock and surface geology), the Äspö Hard Rock Laboratory (research laboratory for geological spent fuel disposal), and the Canister Laboratory (development center for spent fuel encapsulation technology).
Participating this year were students Jeff Geringer, Holly Hernandez, Chris Kuprianczyk, Aristidis Loumis, Katie Mummah, Seung Joon Oh, and Gustavo Pereira. During a “day off,” the students were taken to the Island of Öland to examine rock outcrops.
The Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company, the Center for University Studies Research and Development, the Royal Institute of Technology, Linnaeus University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the European Master in Innovative Nuclear Energy program support the course.