Preliminary Efforts Related to 8-Axle Rail Car Design for Transporting Spent Nuclear Fuel

The Association of American Railroads (AAR) has published a technical standard developed specifically for railcars used during transport of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level waste (HLW): Performance Specification for Trains Used to Carry High-Level Radioactive Material, Standard S-2043. Railcars that meet S-2043 will need to be capable of transporting NRC-certified transportation casks that weigh between 164,000 lb. and 421,000 lb. over the railroad infrastructure in the United States.A previous contract was issued by DOE to develop a cask-carrying railcar to be used to transport SNF and HLW. This contract resulted in the development of a 12-axle cask-carrying railcar design. Due to the capital costs to produce and maintain these cars, an effort has been undertaken that seeks to determine whether it is technically possible to develop an 8-axle cask-carrying railcar that meets S-2043. This paper presents the progress made under a Department of Energy (DOE) contract to prepare for future large-scale rail transport of SNF and HLW utilizing an 8-axle cask-carrying railcar that meets AAR Standard S-2043 for rail transport of SNF and HLW. This contract to develop the design for 8-axle railcar will be executed in three phases: 1) a conceptual design that will meet S-2043, 2) the performance of modelling and optimization to advance the conceptual design to a preliminary design that is ready for submittal to the AAR, and 3) the completion of a preliminary design review by the AAR Equipment Engineering Committee (EEC) that ultimately results in notification from the EEC that the railcar design is ready for prototype fabrication and testing.Footnotes1 Pacific Northwest National Laboratory2 Sharma & Associates, Inc.