Factors Influencing the Evaluation of Spent Fuel Rail Routes - 19010
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is considering use of rail transport for future shipments of commercial spent nuclear fuel (SNF) from where it currently resides to storage or disposal facilities. Rail carriers transporting in commerce certain quantities of 'rail security sensitive materials,' including SNF, face a regulatory requirement from the U.S. Department of Transportation to perform route risk assessments on an annual basis. In performing these assessments, each affected rail carrier must take into consideration twenty-seven different route factors, and document its rationale for selecting preferred and alternative routes on the basis of the safety and security risk analysis results. The major freight rail carriers operating in the U.S. have invested in the development of a proprietary tool, for rail carrier use only, to assist them in making route selections. This tool utilizes operations data input by each affected rail carrier in conjunction with geographic information systems (GIS) data to represent proximate risk factors, to be integrated and assigned to individual points and segments on the railroad network. Separate safety and security risk values are generated for each rail route under consideration. These values are then placed on an equivalent scoring basis and summed together to allow direct comparison between different route options and to rank order each route in terms of its relative attractiveness. Each affected rail carrier files an annual report for evaluation by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) that documents its route risk assessment approach and analysis results. DOE has developed its own decision-support tool, Stakeholder Tool for Assessing Radioactive Transportation (START), which is capable of generating and analyzing routing options for transporting SNF by rail in addition to other freight modes. To better understand how affected rail carriers are likely to route SNF shipments in accordance with regulatory requirements and those route factors likely to be most influential in impacting DoE's evaluation of alternative SNF rail routes, a study was undertaken by DOE with the following objectives: - Review the shipment routes that have been historically used by rail carriers to move high hazard materials, including SNF; - Identify the physical, operational and proximate characteristics (attributes) associated with the rail segments that comprise these routes; - Evaluate the relationships between these attributes; - Make suggestions for how to streamline the factors used in DoE's rail route evaluations; - Contrast these relationships with how the factors are used by the rail carriers in applying their tool This paper describes the study approach, analysis results, and implications for rail route selection methodology. Differences between this evaluation and railroad industry information about rail route assessments are also discussed. (authors)