The U.S. Department of Energy expects in June 2022 to complete its program for designing and certifying railcars intended to be used to transport spent fuel from nuclear power plants, but has not determined what it will do with the designs at that point.
The agency does not anticipate transport of the radioactive material in the near future, as it still doesn’t have anywhere to put it, according to Erica Bickford, a program manager with DOE’s Office of Integrated Waste Management within the Office of Nuclear Energy.
“But our program continues to get appropriations from Congress to do analysis and planning, so we continue to do analysis and planning to try and be ready for whenever the time does come,” Bickford said during a November meeting of the National Academy of Science’s Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board.
The department has spent $22 million to date for four contracts in the program, out of an anticipated outlay of $33 million. The railcar is in the fourth of fifth planned phases for certification by the Association of American Railroads (AAR), with the last phase involving a long-distance test run scheduled for 2022.
The 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act made the Energy Department responsible for permanent disposal of high-level radioactive waste from defense nuclear operations and used fuel from commercial nuclear facilities. That includes transportation, Bickford noted.
There is currently roughly 82,000 metric tons of spent fuel stored on-site at 73 nuclear sites around the nation. That amount increases by 2,000 to 2,500 metric tons annually at operational plants, with potential growth to 140,000 metric tons, according to Bickford’s presentation.
The agency in 2008 applied for a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license to build and operate a waste repository under Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev. That proceeding was defunded two years later by the Obama administration. The Trump administration has tried in three consecutive budget cycles to persuade Congress to appropriate money to resume licensing, but to no avail.
Two corporate teams are separately seeking NRC licenses to build storage sites that could hold the used fuel for as long as 120 years until the repository is ready. Pending regulatory approval, they would open by the mid-2020s.
“Sometimes people ask, ‘Well, if you don’t have a plan for when you’re going to transport the spent fuel, why are you bothering to build a railcar?’” Bickford told the National Academy panel. “it’s a long-lead time activity that we wanted to get a jump on.”
After 18 months of planning and procurement preparations, the Energy Department issued the first contract for the Atlas program in August 2015 – to AREVA Federal Services, since renamed Orano Federal Services in line with the name change for its Paris-based parent company, Orano. The company was tasked with design and fabrication of prototype 12-axle Atlas cask and buffer railcars.
The transport car is designed to carry all casks used for spent-fuel storage at U.S. nuclear power plants, no matter their dimensions. As the name suggests, the buffer cars would be installed between cask cars. Each train would also have a rail escort vehicle for security personnel – the Navy is managing that design and production project, with the Energy Department piggybacking on its work.
Orano manufactured one cask car and two buffer cars. The other contracts involved DOE’s contribution to the Navy’s spending for rail escort vehicle design and fabrication, along with the $14.3 million testing award for the Atlas.
Fabrication of the Atlas railcars began in October 2017, with the full-scale prototypes transported in March 2019 for testing at the Transportation Technology Center at Pueblo, Colo.
The railcars must be certified by the AAR, the industry representative for Class 1 large rail carriers and the standard-setting organization for the industry. Specifically, it must meet the AAR’s S-2043 standard, “designed specifically for railcars used to carry spent nuclear fuel or other high-level radioactive material,” according to Bickford. “It’s their most rigorous design standard. It requires an extensive design process and testing process.”
The Energy Department is roughly halfway through Phase 4 of the Atlas project, testing on single cars. Only one test remains for the buffer car, while all dynamic tests still must be carried out for the cask car. That would be followed by completion of data analysis and preparing the Phase 4 report.
The final Phase 5 will involve tests on multiple cars linked together, capped off by the final long-distance trial run encompassing all parts of the system: locomotives, cask car, buffer cars, and escort vehicle.
“You have to do a number of tests and you have to do a demonstration run outside of the facility, long distance, before you can receive approval for the railcar design,” Bickford said. Details of the long run are still being developed.
The designs will only be considered final upon approval by the AAR Equipment Engineering Committee.
“So right now, assuming all goes well and according to plan, to receive approval for the Atlas railcar design in 2022,” according to Bickford.
What happens after that is to be determined. No decisions have been made at DOE, nor has Orano heard anything about the future of the program.
“As the global leader in used nuclear fuel transportation, we would welcome the opportunity to continue supporting the DOE as it determines and implements the development and operation of nuclear transport in the U.S.,” company spokesman Curtis Roberts said by email.
A full S-2043-certified train would have two locomotives, potentially up to seven cask cars, buffer cars, and the escort vehicle at the tail. Its top speed would be 50 mph.
Meanwhile, the Energy Department is also looking at a potential 8-axle design for Atlas railcars, which presumably would be cheaper to manufacture and to maintain. Railway engineering specialist Sharma & Associates has a three-part contract for conceptual design, modeling and optimization, and preliminary design review by AAR.
The conceptual design should be finished around March, after which the Energy Department will analyze the system to ensure it will function as required. Final design could then be conducted, but there is no master schedule for the program or assurance it will proceed.
“So far that’s going well,” Bickford said. “We did find a rail manufacturer that’s willing to adjust one of their existing truck’s designs to try and make it work. … It’s a little too soon to try and claim victory yet.”
