Development of Rail Transport Solution to Support Transport of Large Nuclear Packages on Restricted Rail Routes

For many years BNFL (now Sellafield Ltd) has transported spent nuclear fuel to Sellafield via Barrow using specially designed rail vehicles. Since the time of first transport (1960s), packages have developed and grown increasing in capacity, size and weight, thereby reducing the number of transports required and increasing efficiency. Unfortunately the UK rail infrastructure has not developed and to this day has a much lower, narrower loading gauge than the neighbouring continental European networks. The reprocessing market has now matured to the point where spent fuel packages are no longer the main transport stream for Sellafield Ltd, and instead the focus is on the preparation for export of high level waste and MOX fuel from Sellafield. The high level waste packages in particular are designed for the larger continental European rail networks and as such will be the largest, heaviest nuclear packages ever to be transported in the UK, exceeding the capabilities of the existing rail vehicles and challenging the infrastructure. Initially it was believed that the transport of these packages would be impossible without dramatically modifying the existing infrastructure or the transport packages, both very expensive and time consuming solutions. International Nuclear Services (a subsidiary of Sellafield Ltd) have worked extremely closely with rail industry experts and UK rail regulators to develop a rail solution, which pushes the bounds of the vehicle design within the existing rail infrastructure to accommodate these large packages. Previous UK rail vehicle designs allow for packages of up to 2.5m diameter and 116te max payload whilst the new development of rail vehicle design allows for up to 2.8m diameter packages and 126te max payloads. The new generation of rail vehicles will improve the transport capabilities of International Nuclear Services Ltd and increase the possibilities for future transport flask designs. This development in new rail vehicle design has been achieved through the use of computer aided engineering tools, project integration and the challenging of the UK rail regulations resulting in concessions, all of which have been approved by the UK rail vehicle licensing authorities. The new vehicles are scheduled to be ride-tested in December 2007 and to be in operation from 2008 onwards.