Nuclear & Uranium
Spent Nuclear Fuel
Release date: December 7, 2015
Next release date: Late 2018
Spent nuclear fuel data are collected by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) for the Department of Energy's Office of Standard Contract Management (Office of the General Counsel) on the Form GC-859, "Nuclear Fuel Data Survey." The data include detailed characteristics of spent nuclear fuel discharged from commercial U.S. nuclear power plants and currently stored at commercial sites in the United States. Utilities were not required to report spent nuclear fuel assemblies shipped to away-from-reactor, off-site facilities.
EIA collected data on spent nuclear fuels annually from 1983 through 1995. Since 1996 EIA collected this data three times. This latest data cover all spent nuclear fuel discharged from and stored at commercial sites before June 30, 2013. Summary tables are provided below. Contact Marta Gospodarczyk to request access to the detailed data.
| number of assemblies | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Reactor type | 1968 through 2002 | 1968 through June 30, 2013 |
Increase |
| Boiling-water reactor | 89,843 | 136,821 | 46,978 |
| Pressurized-water reactor | 69,352 | 104,647 | 35,295 |
| Total | 159,195 | 241,468 | 82,273 |
| metric tons of uranium (MTU) | |||
| Boiling-water reactor | 16,051.6 | 24,314.8 | 8,263.2 |
| Pressurized-water reactor | 29,893.4 | 45,366.8 | 15,473.4 |
| Total | 45,945.0 | 69,681.6 | 23,736.6 |
| Notes: A number of assemblies discharged prior to 1972, which were reprocessed, are not included in this table (no data is available for assemblies reprocessed before 1972). Utilities were not required to report assemblies shipped to away-from-reactor, off-site facilities. This table shows only assemblies reported on Form GC-859. Totals may not equal sum of components because of independent rounding. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Form GC-859, "Nuclear Fuel Data Survey" (2013). |
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| More spent fuel tables: |
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| Table 2. Nuclear power plant data as of June 30, 2013 |
| Table 3. Annual commercial spent fuel discharges and burnup, 1968 - June 30, 2013 |