| 摘要 |
A method and apparatus for generation of electricity from packages of spent-fuel rods either on a remote site or in a permanent underground waste repository. It can also be applied to abandoned deep mines with high temperatures. Also many low-temperature geothermal reservoirs can generate electricity economically. Each individual fuel rod assembly is estimated to produce about 8 kilowatts and the total assemblies in the United States can generate about 63 megawatts of heat. Although this energy cannot be used to generate steam, it is harnessed in the invention by inducing ventilation in shafts constructed as part of an underground mined facility or by installation of ventilation chimneys at reactor sites. Natural ventilation phenomena has been observed and historically used to supply air in mines. It is also the same process that makes chimneys work in fire places and industrial furnaces. In addition to generating electricity, in application to nuclear waste repository design, observations and numerical simulations have shown that, with natural ventilation in accordance with the invention, the repository host-rock temperature may also be kept below 30 degrees Celsius and its moisture conditions kept dry for at least 10,000 years at the proposed high-level radioactive waste repository.
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