The Midwestern Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee (MRMTC)'s CSG-Midwest staffers Mitch Arvidson and Melissa Shahzadeh were in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the week of September 18 for the infrastructure evaluation of the Duane Arnold Energy Center (DAEC). The trip was part of the Department of Energy Office of Integrated Waste Management (DOE-IWM)'s series of visits to shuttered nuclear facilities to assess the infrastructure necessary to support the eventual removal of spent nuclear fuel (SNF). Miriam Juckett of Pacific Northwest National Laboratories (PNNL) deserves a hand of applause for all her work arranging the site visit as do the wonderful team at DAEC who facilitated the tour and assessment. PNNL's Steve Maheras and the Federal Railway Association (FRA)'s Jeff Moore walked, chalked, and assessed the current state of the rail tracks servicing DAEC and gathered plenty of useful data in the process.

Mitch and Melissa will also be travelling to Indiana in early October to hold a Ground Truthing Session with members of the Indiana Department of Homeland Security to discuss the application of the Community Readiness Assessment Framework for Transportation (CRAFT) of SNF by rail, developed by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI). Also in October is the annual Fall MRMTC meeting, this year held in Carlsbad, NM. In addition to the essential agenda topics, the group will tour the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP).

Image of rail tracks in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Photo courtesy of Mitch Arvidson.

Various members of The National Transportation Stakeholders Forum (NTSF) recently met on September 6 and 7 at the Prairie Island Indian Community where the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE) hosted its biannual Transportation Core Group Meeting. Consisting of DOE-NE employees and the leadership and staff of the state regional groups (SRG) and the tribal radioactive materials transportation Committee (TRMTC), this smaller meeting was a deep dive into DOE-NE activities and projects. A detailed review of the hot topics can be found below in the Focus This Month.

The NTSF held another Planning Committee meeting on September 27. The structure of the 2024 meeting's agenda persists as a topic of enthusiastic discussion, but a final vote on the agenda was taken and we are pleased to announce that, in Ellen Edge's (DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM)) words, we now have a "skeleton" upon which to build. Whilst the theme of the Spring NTSF meeting has been identified as "training and preparedness," conversations are ongoing regarding the kind and form of breakout sessions and speakers who will be invited to participate. This will be explored more thoroughly in the October meeting.

Additionally, whilst still nascent, details pertaining to the 2025 meeting are taking shape and both locations and possible social outings were explored. The committee does not anticipate making any firm decisions on 2025 planning until the 2024 meeting concludes.

As the form of the 2024 and 2025 meetings continues to evolve, members are reminded that presentations from the 2023 meeting have been uploaded to the NTSF website and are available for perusal. Additionally, we are pleased to share that all NTSF webinars from previous years (2014 - 2022) have migrated to a new platform and are now available for your perusal. If you fancy a walk down memory lane, you can find and view these webinars here.

Transportation Core Group Meeting Recap

On September 6, the DOE-NE held its biannual Transportation Core Group (TCG) meeting at Prairie Island in Minnesota. MRMTC Co-Chair Tad Rumas (Ohio), Immediate Past Chair Greg Gothard (Michigan), and staffers Mitch Arvidson and Melissa Shahzadeh attended the meeting as well as the tour of the Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant the following morning on September 7. The tour was a fascinating look at the inner workings of a nuclear power facility; it was an opportunity to interact with the fleet of men and women who, in a very real way, are responsible for keeping the lights on in many homes across the nation. Staffers were also able to view the independent spent fuel storage installation (ISFSI) on site at Prairie Island and the security measures in place to keep both the people and the environment secure.

The TCG meeting itself was an all-day marathon with representatives from all regions and with most stakeholders present. Erica Bickford, Director of the DOE-IWM, spoke fluently about Integrated Waste Management (IWM) updates and provided a high-level overview of the DOE’s timeline for obtaining, transporting, and storing the nation’s SNF. Dr. Bickford highlighted the DOE’s efforts including the effective implementation of consolidated federal interim storage, full-scale package performance testing of rail-sized SNF casks, engagement with state and Tribal partners, and the evaluation of transportation infrastructure at nuclear facilities across the country. Additionally, she spoke facilely on the consent-based siting process, which was updated on April 23, and emphasized that the process was designed to reduce obstacles that might otherwise prevent communities from putting themselves forward for consideration. However, it was the DOE’s Vincent Ialenti, a trained social scientist, who spoke at length about the role he and the DOE team will play in the consent-based siting process.

Dr. Ialenti emphasized that the siting of a federal interim storage facility is a socio-economic issue and the process for ensuring environmental and community justice is both iterative and recursive. He discussed six steps aimed at building trust between Federal and community-based stakeholders involved in the process as well as exercises to build foundations of engagement that ensure intergenerational equity. Dr. Ialenti drew a line under transparency and communication as central tenets of the consent-based siting process. He indicated that a kickoff meeting had been held on July 24 and 25 that was a closed working meeting aimed at innovating stakeholder engagement by helping to focus the message to the nation that there is a nuclear waste problem in this country that needs to be solved.

Later in the day, Vanderbilt University's Mark Abkowitz presented on the manner in which radiological risks for the proposed transportation of SNF can be assessed using the Stakeholder Tool for Assessing Radioactive Transportation (START). Effectively, there are two different scenarios the tool can model for assessing risk: incident-free and accident-based. In the incident-free scenario, the tool considers the nominal amount of radiation exposure associated with a stationary cask as well as calculating for a collective population according to each mode of transport (highway, rail, and waterway). In these scenarios, the maximally exposed individuals are hypothetical workers. The driver, for example, of a lorry hauling SNF will theoretically spend the most time in close proximity to the package. In the accident-based scenarios, the tool considers radiation exposure resulting from an accident whilst the shipment is in transit by considering three possibilities: 1. The transportation cask is damaged but does not incur loss of containment or shielding; 2. The shielding function of the cask is reduced; and 3. The cask incurs loss of containment.



PNNL's Steve Maheras presented on advanced reactor topics including the transportation of high assay low enriched uranium (HALEU) fuel and microreactor transport. Dr. Maheras explained that the current nuclear fuel cycle is based on transporting industrial quantities of low enriched uranium and widespread use of HALEU will result in inevitable and essential changes to the shipping process. Fundamentally, the industrial infrastructure needed to support a HALEU fuel economy does not yet exist, according to Dr. Maheras. In contrast, the transport of advanced reactor fuel should not present the same obstacle unless (or until) the reactor fuel is shipping inside a modular reactor. The fuel economy will undergo a seismic paradigm shift at that time, particularly when or if molten salt reactor fuel is involved.

Lively discussion and good humor abounded at the Transportation Core Group. Frivolity and blithesome bantering continued into the evening, where participants engaged in a competitive game of bowling. Grace and decorum, if not life and limb, were hazarded in pursuit of the strike. We are pleased to report that no hospital visits were required and only minor injuries sustained as a result of over-enthusiastic athleticism.

Nuclear News

One Step Closer to the Restart of Palisades

It was announced on September 12 that Holtec International and Wolverine Power Cooperative, a not-for-profit power generation cooperative based in Michigan, entered into a long-term agreement that will pave the way for the restart of the 800-megawatt Palisades Nuclear Power Plant in Covert Township. Wolverine committed to purchase up to two-thirds of the power generated by Palisades for its Michigan-based member rural elective cooperatives. Hoosier Energy, Wolverine's non-profit rural electric cooperative partner, will purchase the balance. Holtec's president of Nuclear Generation and Decommissioning, Kelly Trice, is quoted as expressing delight for this partnership. "The executed power purchase agreement represents a significant milestone in our journey toward reopening the plant, a historic moment for Michigan and the country." Read more about this agreement on the Holtec website.

Speaking of restarting nuclear facilities, our Northern neighbor is engaged in similar efforts. Canada's Bruce Power Unit 6 in Ontario was declared commercially-operational on September 14, which was precisely 39 years to the day after it first entered commercial service in 1984. The Candu unit was reconnected to the Canadian grid at 30% power following a Major Component Replacement (MCR) outage that began in 2020. Unit 6 was the first of six units to be overhauled under Bruce Power's Life Extension Program, which extends their operation to 2064. You can read more about the work happening at Bruce Power at the World Nuclear News.

Proposed North Carolina Legislation Says Nuclear Energy is Clean Energy

The News & Observer published an article on September 5 reporting that proposed legislation currently pending in the North Carolina General Assembly will permit Duke Energy and other utilities to use nuclear energy to meet a 12.5% target of clean or renewable power in that state. Previous legislation that established North Carolina's renewable energy portfolio explicitly excluded nuclear energy. However, Sen. Paul Newton, who is sponsoring the bill, believes that nuclear energy is essential for ensuring dispatchable electricity. He is quoted as saying that small modular reactors are particularly attractive as they can be located at the sites of former coal plants. Sen. Newton, who is a former state president of Duke Energy, believes expanding nuclear power will provide an economic boost whilst also saving customers money by utilizing extant power lines and transmission infrastructure.

DoD Awards Micro-Reactor Contract

The DoD announced on September 13 that they have awarded a contract to X-Energy for development of a design for a transportable micro-reactor. The contract is part of the Strategic Capabilities Office's (SCO) Project Pele, which began in 2022 and aims to construct a micro-reactor within five years that will produce one to five megawatts of electricity per year for a minimum of three years. The reactor will be a prototype unit deployed within the United States whilst under the safety oversight of the DOE. However, this work represents a "whole-of-government effort" involving the DOE, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Nuclear Security Administration, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and the US Army Corps of Engineers. This new contract aims to create a preliminary engineering design that will satisfy the need for a carbon-free energy source. The SCO director Jay Dryer opines that this investment will benefit the nation: "By nurturing and developing multiple micro-reactor designs, SCO will not just provide options for the military Services, but will also help jumpstart a truly competitive commercial marketplace for micro-reactors."

Project Optimist Explores Minnesota's Vexed Relationship with Nuclear Power

Project Optimist is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization based in St. Cloud, MN and the first story in a series from this group explored the ideological conflict faced by legislatures in Minnesota. The crux of the issue, according to Project Optimist, is the announcement made by Governor Tim Walz earlier this year in which he committed all utilities to decarbonization by 2040. As a result, solar, hydro, and wind facilities are in process of expansion and deployment. Yet, nuclear power is omitted from this list due to a 1994 statewide moratorium placed on new construction of nuclear facilities. The story, written by R.C. Drews and published in Energy News Network on September 15, is an interesting read that appears to aim at a dispassionate presentation of facts. The next story, entitled "Nuclear at a Crossroads," will explore the Canadian and European views of nuclear as part of a carbon-free energy portfolio. The series will also include a history of nuclear disasters, a history of nuclear development in Minnesota, and a discussion of emerging nuclear technology. Find this story and future series stories on the Energy News Network website.

Atlas Did Not Shrug

The DOE announced on September 21 that the Atlas railcar, designed specifically to transport SNF and high-level radioactive waste, successfully completed its 1,680-mile test voyage from Pueblo, Colorado to Scoville, Idaho. The 12-axle railcar was loaded with 480,000 pounds of steel test weights, its maximum carrying capacity, to simulate the heaviest transport container currently certified by the NRC. Dr. Patrick Schwab, The DOE's Atlas railcar project manager, underscored this milestone by proclaiming it "key" to the successful operation of the nation's nuclear waste management system. "Through the successful completion of the test and the Atlas railcar project, we have delivered a capability for the Department to effectively transport spent nuclear fuel to future DOE storage and disposal facilities," he is quoted as saying. The $33 million project took 10 years and has resulted in the development and testing of the Atlas, buffer cars, and rail escort vehicles (REV). The four fabricated prototype railcars will be ready for operational use when the final testing data has been granted conditional approval by the Association of American Railroads (AAR). Read more about Atlas' steadfastness on the DOE's website.