Months of testing in 2017 provided strong evidence that spent nuclear fuel can be safely transported by sea, road, and rail, according to a researcher with the Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories.
A team of researchers from the United States, South Korea, and Spain over 54 days from June to October collected 8 terabytes of data involving four means of transport. Their project moved three “surrogate” spent fuel assemblies 9,458 miles in a dual-purpose cask from Santander, Spain, to Pueblo, Colo.
The testing involved: using cranes to lift the cask, dropping it to a concrete pad with different levels of force; trucking it around northern Spain; sailing it from Spain to Belgium and then across the Atlantic Ocean from Belgium to Baltimore, sometimes over 20-foot swells; rolling it 2,000 miles by rail to Pueblo, conducting eight days of rail testing at the Transportation Technology Center; and then another rail trip back to Baltimore. The cask then went back to Spain, though that trip was not included in the test.
Seventy-seven accelerometers and strain gauges were applied to the mock fuel assemblies and cask system. The instruments indicated the strain and acceleration on the fuel during all modes of transport were well within safety limits, according to Sylvia Saltzstein, manager of Sandia’s used nuclear fuel transportation and storage department.
“This data will be used to provide the technical basis for asserting that there is inherent safety in transporting spent fuel under normal conditions of transport,” Saltzstein said last month during a panel discussion at the Nuclear Energy Institute’s Used Fuel Management Conference in Savannah, Ga.
Testing in the current 2018 federal budget year will include frequency transmission, instantaneous versus gross loading, system behavior, and other areas, according to Saltzstein.
The Energy Department is more than two decades behind its congressionally mandated deadline of Jan. 31, 1998, to begin permanent disposal of what is now upward of 80,000 metric tons of used fuel at U.S. nuclear power reactors. Congress’ assigned disposal location at Yucca Mountain, Nev., remains hotly contested, while two teams are planning interim facilities that could hold the material until the final facility is open for business.
In either case, moving the waste will require the kind of transport the three-nation team of researchers has been testing – possibly repeatedly, if consolidated interim storage is realized. The thought of a potential accident in moving dangerous radioactive material is not comforting for communities that would be along the road or rail routes on the used fuel’s way to its destination.
The Energy Department is developing the Atlas Railcar to carry the used fuel. AREVA Federal Services (now Orano Federal Services) received the first contract in August 2015 for the initial three phases of the project – mobilization and conceptual design, preliminary design, and production and delivery of a prototype. Phase 3 is underway now, Matthew Feldman, DOE Office of Nuclear Energy Integrated Waste Management account manager for transportation, said during the same panel discussion.
The Energy Department is negotiating a contract for the final two phases of the contract – single-car and multiple-car testing. That is due to begin next March, with project completion anticipated in 2022.
Single-car tests would include vehicle and component characterization, static brake tests, structural tests, and ability to negotiate curbs, among other measures, Feldman told RadWaste Monitor this week. Multiple-car trials will encompass braking tests, system monitoring tests, and other service tests.
The final step would be conditional approval from the Association of American Railroads. “Deployment immediately after phase 5 (multiple-car testing including receipt of conditional approval from AAR) using the tested cars,” Feldman said by email. “Production would take some time but could be performed at risk prior to conditional approval.”
The railcar would be compliant with AAR Standard S-2043, covering performance standards for trains carrying high-level radioactive waste. It is designed to accommodate 17 specific existing spent fuel transportation casks.
Full approval from AAR would require the railcar to operate satisfactorily over 100,000 miles and a follow-up test report.
Feldman said the cost of the entire Atlas program is “procurement sensitive” and cannot be made public.
One industry expert said experience gleaned from decades of spent fuel transport in the United States and abroad shows further testing is not necessary.
“I know one thing that you should not worry about at all, and that is: Can we ship spent fuel in the United States? Because of course we can,” Jack Edlow, president of nuclear transport provider Edlow International, said at the NEI conference.
As an example, he cited nearly 4,000 fuel assemblies sent to storage at the Morris Operation independent spent fuel storage installation in Illinois. Edlow International could make up to 100 fuel shipments in the United States this year, mostly material being returned to the United States from foreign research reactors, Edlow added.
There has never been a transport accident in which a container breached or leaked, according to the World Nuclear Association.
Further research sends a bad message to a skeptical public, Edlow said: “The more we have to study things, the more they think we don’t understand them and we don’t know how to do this, and that’s a mistake.”
Saltzstein pushed back against that idea, saying the data compiled by the transport trial complements the experience of actual fuel shipment. “So we have a huge margin of safety. Is this something that our professional opinion told us before this test? Some would say yes, some would say no. Now we have data to really say, yeah, we have a huge margin of safety, we don’t have a problem.”
