The last railcar in a proposed spent nuclear fuel rail transport system is en route to Colorado this week for testing, the Department of Energy said in a press release.
The Rail Escort Vehicle (REV) will undergo multiple-car testing at a site near Pueblo, Colo., DOE said in its Monday statement. The railcar is set to arrive at the test site in late February, the statement said.
If the system is put to use, the REV would house security personnel guarding spent fuel and low-level radioactive waste as it’s transported cross-country by the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program (NNPP), also known as Naval Reactors.
The REV is the last part of NNPP’s efforts to replace its existing fleet of spent fuel escort vehicles, DOE said. The security car was designed by Oregon-based manufacturer Vigor Works, LLC. DOE contributed around $10 million in federal funding to the project, the agency said.
Once the railcar arrives in Colorado, it will be connected to DOE’s experimental Atlas railcar designed to house spent nuclear fuel, the statement said. The agency predicted that the rail system will be operational by 2024 after two years of testing.
NNPP primarily transports defense-related nuclear waste by rail. Civilian spent fuel, with nowhere to go, is mostly stored onsite at nuclear plants.
