Underground Nuclear Power Parks: Power Plant Design Implications

The siting of nuclear power plants underground, along with associated reprocessing, fuel manufacturing, and high level waste disposal facilities offer many advantages. Security costs are substantially less, radiative package transportation issues are eliminated, and political issues of high level waste storage and disposal are largely eliminated. Keeping the site preparation costs to a minimum requires that the underground facilities accommodate several power producing units (nominally 6 GW or more). However, significant redesign and placement of components can make it possible to accomplish most of the underground excavation with tunnel boring machines. These latter issues are addressed in this paper.