PNNL

Abstract

This report fulfills the fiscal year 2025 M2 Milestone M2AT-25PN0802042, Final Microreactor Transportation Safety Program Planning Framework. Microreactors are compact reactors capable of producing less than 50 megawatts of electrical energy. Typically, these reactors are factory-fabricated and designed to be easily transportable by truck, rail, vessel, or air. Microreactor designs often assume that the unit can be transported containing either unirradiated or irradiated fuel. Interest in microreactors is driven by several factors, including the need to generate power at remote locations, military installations, and facilities such as data centers, and in areas recovering from natural disasters. The U.S. Department of Defense is actively pursuing the microreactor concept to meet the increasing energy demands of military operations that require portable and dense power sources. Commercial vendors are also exploring microreactor concepts. The report Microreactor Transportation Emergency Planning Challenges outlined the emergency planning challenges associated with the transportation of microreactors by road, rail, and by barge/ship. The successful commercial deployment and redeployment of microreactors will also require the development of microreactor transportation safety programs. The elements in these safety programs are not specific to microreactors; however, the transport of microreactors may pose unique challenges in these areas. This report builds on the Microreactor Transportation Emergency Planning Challenges report and develops a prototype safety program for microreactor transportation that describes the elements that should be contained in vendor-developed microreactor transportation safety programs, identifying the unique elements associated with microreactor transport. This will provide vendors and their transportation contractors with a basis for transportation planning and accelerate the commercial deployment and redeployment of microreactors by identifying issues unique to microreactor transport. The emphasis of this report is on highway transport of microreactors. This is based on a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission transportation package approval strategy of crawl-walk-run, where transport by highway is evaluated first, then other surface modes (rail and barge/ship), and finally air transport. Evaluation of maritime transport of microreactors was recently initiated. This report first discusses microreactors in general and planning assumptions for a microreactor transportation safety program. The report then describes the transportation safety planning process and provides an extensive discussion of the elements of transportation safety programs. Specific elements examined included transportation roles and responsibilities, transportation planning, transportation mode and route selection, carrier selection, transportation packaging, advance notification of shipments, public information and communications, emergency response plans and procedures, inspections, security, safe parking, shipment tracking, weather and road conditions, medical preparedness, training and exercises, and program evaluation. The report then identifies the unique elements of a transportation safety program associated with microreactor transport. These unique elements were in the areas of the unusual nature of microreactor designs, compensatory measures, increased radiation dose rates in the vicinity of microreactors, transportation package approval versus 10 CFR 50.59, the use of a risk informed approval process for transportation packages, and the prevention of criticality.