1. Transportation of Radioactive Material in the United States
Earl P. Easton

2. Focus of Today’s Presentation
Regulatory Roles and Responsibilities
Approval Process for Transportation Packages
Transportation Package Designs
Your Questions

3. Regulatory Roles and Responsibilities

4. 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
NRC responsible for safe possession, use, transport of license nuc. Mats.
1st Bul: NRC approves cask designs as acc. Resistant
Review of new design takes about 1 year by staff of about experts in fields of Struct., Mats, therm.containment, rad prot. Shielding, nuc. Eng…
Tests /analysis are done in series: 30’ drop, puncture, fire, and submersion…assume worst orientiation of cask to max potential effects (conservative)
NRC approves QAPs and registers users of plans
2nd Bul: NRC inspects to verify regs are met and containers/casks are built in accordance with approved disigns, that shipments follow DOT and NRC requirements. NRC will conduct on site audits/reviews and will document findings in publicly available reports. NRC staff also will often accompany major shipping campaigns.

5. 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

6. 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

7. State and Local Governments
Have lead role in responding to emergencies.
May enact additional safety requirements that are not in conflict with DOT requirements.

8. Approval Process for Transportation Packages

9. Definition of some common terms
Packaging – the actual shipping container
Package – packaging plus approved contents
Cask – a heavily shielded packaging or package

10. Types of Packaging

11. Package Approval Standards

12. 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

13. 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

14. 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

15. Certification of Spent Fuel Cask Designs
Technical Reviews based on Standard Review Plan.
Certification may be based on computer analysis, or full or scale model testing.
NRC inspects cask designers, fabricators and shippers to make sure that casks are constructed to approved designs.

16. NRC approvals for
radioactive material shipping packages are published every year.
NUREG – 0383,
Volume 2, Rev. 26
Available online through ADAMS

17. Before each shipment a spent fuel cask would be:
leak tested
checked for contamination
surveyed for radiation level

18. Questions