Planning the Schedule for the Disposal of the Spent Nuclear Fuel with Interactive Multiobjective Optimization

Abstract

Several countries utilize nuclear power and face the problem of what to do with the spent nuclear fuel. One possibility, which is under the scope in this paper, is to dispose of the fuel assemblies in the disposal facility. Before the assemblies can be disposed of, they must cool down their decay heat power in the interim storage. Next, they are loaded into canisters in the encapsulation facility, and finally, the canisters are placed in the disposal facility. In this paper, we model this process as a nonsmooth multiobjective mixed-integer nonlinear optimization problem with the minimization of nine objectives: the maximum number of assemblies in the storage, maximum storage time, average storage time, total number of canisters, end time of the encapsulation, operation time of the encapsulation facility, the lengths of disposal and central tunnels, and total costs. As a result, we obtain the disposal schedule i.e., amount of canisters disposed of periodically. We introduce the interactive multiobjective optimization method using the two-slope parameterized achievement scalarizing functions which enables us to obtain systematically several different Pareto optimal solutions from the same preference information. Finally, a case study adapting the disposal in Finland is given. The results obtained are analyzed in terms of the objective values and disposal schedules.