Transportation of Radioactive Material in the United States

Earl P. Easton

Focus of Today’s Presentation

• Regulatory Roles and Responsibilities

• Approval Process for Transportation

Packages

• Transportation Package Designs

• Your Questions

Regulatory Roles and Responsibilities

Nuclear Regulatory Commission

• Licenses the commercial use of Radioactive material, including transportation.

• Certification of Shipping Casks

• Inspection of Cask Designers, Fabricators

• Enforcement of Physical Protection Measures

• Emergency Response – assistance to first responders, lead Federal Agency

Department of Transportation

– Regulates the transportation of all hazardous material, including spent fuel.

– Hazards communications (marking and labeling of casks, placarding of vehicles, shipping papers, etc.)

– Carrier safety (rail and highway safety regulations)

– Route selection criteria

Department of Energy

– Conducts largest non-commercial transportation of spent fuel and transuranic waste.

– Will conduct largest transportation campaign for spent fuel to a Repository

– Route selection using DOT selection criteria• Implementation of physical protection measures• Emergency response – assistance to first responders,

Coordinating Agency under the National Response Plan

• Funding for emergency response training

State and Local Governments

– Have lead role in responding to emergencies.

– May enact additional safety requirements that are not in conflict with DOT requirements.

Approval Process for Transportation Packages

Definition of some common terms

• Packaging – the actual shipping container

• Package – packaging plus approved contents

• Cask – a heavily shielded packaging or package

Types of Packaging

Package Approval Standards

Accident Condition Tests

• Apply to all “Type B” packages

• Bound (not mimic) the impacts experienced in credible real-life transportation accidents

– Impact, puncture and thermal tests are sequential

• Are designed to be reproducible and consistent

Acceptance Criteria for Accident Condition Tests

• Loss of shielding– Dose rate can not exceed 1 rem/hr at 40 inches

• Containment– Release of radioactive material can not exceed

an A2 per week.

• Criticality Safety– Contents must remain in subcritical

configuration

Compliance with Accident Condition Tests

• Full scale testing– Pass-fail test

• Computer analysis – Computer programs benchmarked against real data

– Conservative assumptions

– Safety margins

• Computer analysis supplemented with:– Full scale component testing

– Scale model testing

Certification of Spent Fuel Cask Designs

Technical Reviews based on Technical Reviews based on Standard Review Plan.Standard Review Plan.

Certification may be based Certification may be based on computer analysis, or full on computer analysis, or full or scale model testing.or scale model testing.

NRC inspects cask NRC inspects cask designers, fabricators and designers, fabricators and shippers to make sure that shippers to make sure that casks are constructed to casks are constructed to approved designs.approved designs.

• NRC approvals forradioactive material shipping packages are published every year.

• NUREG – 0383,• Volume 2, Rev. 26

• Available online through ADAMS

Before each shipment a spent fuel cask would be:

• leak tested

• checked for contamination

• surveyed for radiation level

Questions

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