Kasgro Rail, New Castle, Pa., started building part of a prototype heavy-duty rail car to transport spent nuclear fuel, the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy announced Monday.
Fabrication of deck components for the prototype, eight-axle Fortis railcar began “recently,” according to the office’s press release.
Fortis is one of two rail cars DOE is building to transport spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste, once DOE has anywhere to move such material.
DOE book keeps funding for both railcars in the Nuclear Energy office’s Integrated Waste Management System subprogram. According to the 2025 budget request DOE released last week, fabrication started in fiscal year 2023, which ended on Oct. 1.
The Integrated Waste Management System subprogram has a $55-million budget for 2024, under an appropriations package signed into law on March 9. DOE has requested $53 million for the account in fiscal year 2025.
At an industry conference last week in Phoenix, Paul Murray, DOE’s deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and waste disposition, said the agency planned a tour of the rails for at least one of its custom cars and some of the casks it will eventually carry.
“We will take an empty…cask and we will drive it around the country,” Murray said during a panel discussion at the annual Waste Management Symposia last week in Phoenix.
Stops on the tour could include Union Station in Washington, only a few minutes by foot from the U.S. Capitol, Murray said.
