Current and future strategies for spent nuclear fuel management in Indonesia

Currently, Indonesia has only three nuclear research reactors. However, Indonesia is the world's fourth most populous country. Owing to the enormous size and rapid growth of the population and the limited availability of fossil fuel and renewable energy resources, the construction of new nuclear power plants (NPPs) has been considered. Because of this, the management policies for long-term spent nuclear fuel in Indonesia have become crucial. This paper reviews the current handling and future management strategies for spent nuclear fuel in Indonesia. With a maximum capacity of 1448 spent fuel elements, Indonesia's interim wet storage of spent fuel (ISSF) is designed to store spent nuclear fuel arising from 25 years of reactor operation at maximum power. However, with the existing low-power reactor operation, the ISSF could be utilized for more than 75 years. The potential problem for long-term storage in the ISSF is system, structure, and component (SSC) aging. Continuous planning, operation, monitoring, and maintenance of the SSC in the ISSF have been conducted to ensure safe long-term utilization of the facility. In accordance with the possibility of NPP construction in the future, three possible scenarios may be considered for future nuclear spent fuel management strategies in Indonesia: 1) wet storage - dry storage - disposal; 2) wet storage -repatriation or sending to other countries; and 3) wet storage - moving to wet- or dry storage of NPP candidate - disposal.