Yves Brachet
TRANSNUCLEAIRE
9/11 rue Christophe Colomb
75008 - Paris
France
Tel: 33 (1) 40 69 77 00

This paper aims at describing and explaining what is the logistic implemented in France for nuclear materials and waste transports. It will detail the various steps ranging from early preparation of the transport to the completion of the documentation after the transport.

We will also focus on the most recent trends in nuclear materials transportation in France among which one can find:

• Definition of the customer’s needs in terms of packaging and transport means.
• Long term planning (sometimes years in advance) of the transport operations.
• Transportation licenses from the authorities.
• Certificate of conformity of the products to be transported with the currents licenses (specially sensitive in case of radioactive waste).
• Short term planning.
• Realization of transport operations, including:
• Assistance to packaging’s loading operations.
• Real-time tracking of the transports.
• Assistance to unloading operations.

Furthermore, specific transport emergency plan and emergency training have been set up by TRANSNUCLEAIRE allowing it to face adequately any transport accident. The principles of these plans will be presented. This paper will also describe what is the industrial scheme implemented within the COGEMA Group in order to achieve these transports.

As a conclusion, we will explain what are the advantages of the logistics in place and which way it can comply with regular spent fuel, recycled products and waste transport fluxes in the years to come.

At present, France produces approximately 75 % of its electricity using nuclear power, generated by the 57 nuclear power plants in operation within EDF, national utility. These power plants form a fundamental part of a complete closed fuel cycle involving reprocessing and recycling industrial capabilities in which COGEMA acts as a general coordinator from mining of uranium to plutonium recycling into MOX fuel.

As a link between nuclear power plants and reprocessing plants, transportation of spent fuel and waste materials is a key component of this nuclear fuel cycle. Like other transports, these take place in the public area ; in this area, because of the close link with both population and environment, the transport operations have to be as perfect as possible.

The French transportation system has demonstrated its maturity in terms of safety, reliability, cost-efficiency and respect of environment since France is the only country which organises yearly more than 300 spent fuel transports, using all possible transport means (road, rail, sea).

This success is explainable thanks to its global reliability based on close respect of general principles and safety rules which have been carefully established by international experts, published as recommendations by the AIEA and enforced worldwide through various national and international regulations. All international nuclear industry has consequently to operate in this framework.

Basically, the transport safety relies upon the packaging which must be adapted to the potential risks. Three types of packagings have been elaborated according to chemical and physical nature, activity and toxicity of the shipped materials: industrial (for low activity and toxicity materials as uranium ore, low level waste...), type A (for medium activity and toxicity materials as non homogeneous waste, medical sources...) and type B packagings (for high activity and toxicity materials as spent fuel, plutonium, fresh MOX fuel or high level waste...). Type B packagings, for instance, must resist to hypothetical transport accident conditions like fire, impact, puncture in order to meet the international regulations.

Involved in the fuel cycle for more than 20 years, COGEMA performs large quantities of nuclear material transports through its subsidiary TRANSNUCLEAIRE who is specialized in the engineering and fabrication of transport casks as well as in organisation of transport operations.

TRANSNUCLEAIRE has shipped smoothly and safely, over 30 years, a large number of nuclear materials all over the world, amongst which spent fuel (more than 5,000 spent fuel cask transports between 1966 and the end of 1997). Its TN 12 and TN 17 family are successfully used internationally and this largely thanks to exemplary logistics, from preparation to completion of the transport.

Acting as a Shipping Agent, TRANSNUCLEAIRE (TN) is the centre of a comprehensive Transport Organization System implemented in order to ensure efficient and reliable services to its customers. TN is responsible for planning, preparation and supervision of transportation operations.

TRANSNUCLEAIRE is responsible for the identification of the transport needs of customers, for the licensing and for the completion of documentation before transport. All these steps are listed in a quality plan that each TN transport operator has to complete before the transport.

This step is very important because in some cases, it can involve modification or conception of a packaging design or the definition of new transport means.

A new cask design has to be carried out with the following objectives: compliance with regulatory normal and accidental conditions of transport, practical safety of transport in the various modes, loading and unloading of the packaging and ease and quality of all the operations.

TN develops transport means wholly dedicated to nuclear materials: for road, this consists of a fleet of 60 dedicated vehicles owned by its two subsidiaries LEMARECHAL (for North of France) and CELESTIN (for South of France). Their trucks are equipped with a real time satellite tracking system.

Concerning railway transports, TN uses SNCF (national railway company). However, SNCF tows COGEMA owned-wagons which are specially designed for nuclear materials transports. With a weight of 160 tons and a length of 25 meters, they allow spent fuel transports from French power plants but also from Germany, Switzerland and Belgium to La Hague reprocessing plant. In spite of their specificities, they are used with ease and move at the same speed as other freight trains.

For sea transports of laboratory spent fuel material, TN has entered into an agreement with the CMNN (Compagnie Morbihannaise et Nantaise de Navigation) in order to use two ships type INF2 (Le Bouguenais et Le Beaulieu) which meet prescriptions established by the International Maritime Organisation. These concern the design and the fitting of ships which transport spent nuclear fuel, plutonium and high level waste. The two CMNN ships can also be used for other radioactive materials.

For high activity materials, sea transports between Europe and Japan, are ensured by the five type INF3 ships owned by PNTL (Pacific Nuclear Transport Limited), in which COGEMA is shareholder with BNFL and other Japanese partners.

Some of the TN transport equipments are represented in appendix 1.

In the same way, TN has to select the transport mode according to the needs: road is normally chosen for short distance transports and less heavy loads whereas railway is normally used for long distance transports and heavier loads ; sea transportation is generally reserved for reprocessing-recycling activities with overseas countries (such as Japan).

Beyond transport means, TN develops associated services such as maintenance of transport materials thanks to MMT (Maintenance Materials Transport). The aim of maintenance is to ensure that the state of the equipment remains at a level which provides the level of performances as required in the safety licensing documents. Operations of maintenance of casks are performed according to basic procedures and periodicity is decided at the design stage. Nevertheless, the return of experience allows to modify this data, with the agrement of the Safety Authorities.

TN operates also railway and shipping terminals, where the packagings have to change from one transport mode to another transport mode (for instance rail to ship or road to rail...).

The road and rail transport of radioactive materials in France are ruled by RID and ADR regulations (European regulations strictly based on IAEA recommandations).

The compliance of a type B packaging with regulations is presented in a Safety Analysis Report submitted to national competent Authority. After review, the Authority grants the licensing certificate. It may have either a universal validity (unilateral licensing) or a national only validity (multilateral licensing). The latter requires a validation in each country concerned by the transport. Fissile aspect is always a multilateral licensing and always requires validation in each country.

In order to obtain license and authorizations, a transport packaging must comply with a number of specifications and requirements and pass certain tests, including confrontation to various hypothetical accidental situations that it may meet during transport.

An example of the tests to be passed by type B packaging:

• representative of normal conditions of transport,
• representative of accidental conditions of transport,

is given in appendix 2.

Among all the tests the cask must withstand, the first is a drop from 9 meters height onto an unyielding surface followed by a puncture test. The 9 meter drop test is considered much more severe than the real situation because impacts in transport accidents occur onto deformable surfaces (water, earth, ...). Moreover, experiment shows that it corresponds to a real drop of more than 30 meters with an impact speed in excess of 100 km/h, as seen in numerous accident simulations in many countries. The second test considers the cask placed in a fire at a minimum constant temperature of 800°C for 30 minutes ; finally, the packaging is submerged under 15 meters of water (200 meters for type B packagings containing spent fuel assemblies).

Different packagings developped by TN are represented in appendix 3.

As soon as the license is obtained and its applicability checked, the next phase consists in term planning of the transport, reservation of means, informing the various partners and filling in of transport progress documents.

Following the logic of the Fuel Cycle, transports of nuclear materials can be divided into front- and back-end cycle transports, waste transportation belonging to the back-end cycle transports.

If the nature and the quantities of the shipped materials for these two transport types are different, they also differ largely in the origin and destination of fluxes.

Shipped materials of front-end cycle are essentially uranium concentrates from mining fresh fuel for nuclear power plants, UF₆, nitrates, UO₂ powder. Taking into account the location of natural resources and nuclear programs, front-end transports evolve consequently in an international environment. TN carries out transports of large quantities of uranium concentrates (Yellow Cake and U₃O₈) from Australia, South Africa, Namibia, Russia, Czech Republic and Canada. France also imports and exports natural and enriched UF₆ from/to Europe, Canada, United States, South Africa and Japan. In 1996, TN transported 500 ISO 20’ containers, 1500 UF₆ cylinders and 850 tons of fresh fuel.

In a very competitive context, contracts are « spot » contracts, that is contracts established often only for a small number of transports, usually in urgency. The realisation of these transports is organised by TN and subcontracted to specialized partners (such as maritime and railways companies) to which TN brings its Quality Assurance program, its technical expertise and specialized services, such as real time tracking system or emergency reponse plan.

At the contrary of front-end transports, back-end transports are more often planned in the long term. They often concern smaller quantities, but of very radioactive materials and therefore require more sophisticated and resistant casks. This is why TN runs an important program of Research and Development, in order both to follow market evolutions, and to adapt to ever improving safety standards.

Whereas some TN casks have been designed to satisfy interim storage needs of utilities, the majority of its casks are dedicated to transports linked to reprocessing-recycling activities.

TN ensures spent fuel transportation between EDF power plants and the La Hague reprocessing plant, but also international transports to La Hague for foreign customers in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Japan. The ultimate residues of reprocessing are to be returned to the customers after several years.

The first and second sea transport operations to Japan of casks with canisters of vitrified residues were completed in 1995 and 1996, and the first transports to Germany were performed in May 1996 and 1997. According to a well-defined schedule, several other HLW transports will be planned over the next few years to Japan, Germany and Belgium.

Planned with a short notice (front-end case) or foreseen several years before (back-end case), all transports have to be carefully prepared according to various steps.

To confirm a short term planning, TN must be sure that all the transport means and all the casks equipments and license are available.

In the same way, it must contact the road haulage contractor, the shipping or railway company in order to ensure that the transport means is available.

In addition, TN is under obligation to inform the Safety Authorities, at the appropriate time in advance of the transport.

Finally, the shipping documents required by the Regulations must be prepared.

It is worth noting that for some transport categories, some further steps are added : foreign countries Authorities ask for additional transport authorizations, the French Ministry of Transport is notified as well as the railway and shipping terminals, the agreement of the consignee to receive the materials is required, technical assistance and motorcycle police escort are also requested, if needed.

The two last steps of the organization consist in sending regulatory shipping documents to the trucking company and checking of all operations list by a different operator (Quality Assurance verification). Then the transport can take place.

As soon as the go ahead of the transport is given, TN, as a shipping agent, has to supervise execution of all operations in application of its Quality Assurance System and be ready in case of problem to apply its emergency response plan. TN offers also a further possible service to its customers: cask loading and unloading assistance.

For each loading and unloading, in power plants or where there is a transhipment of cargo, TN agents are present to supervise handling of the cask and attest that all operations have been correctly executed, including, for instance, leaktightness checks.

Another main activity of TN during transport is to control the satisfactory progress ; hence, TN has recently put into service a real time vehicle tracking system.

TN customers express increasingly the need to be informed in real time on the situation of the transport. In the past, whatever the transport mode was, TN had already modern means to locate, for instance:

• mobile telephones aboard of all road vehicles (the driver was requested to call at departure, arrival and for special events) ;
• Special SNCF railway team provides reports from different stations passed ;
• radio contacts with the captain of ships for certain marine transports and always with the shipping company ;

progress of air transports through air control centres and also airlines company.

Nevertheless, the positions communicated are insufficient compared with tracking in real time which avoids mistakes. Without it, there are numerous possibilities of bad informations: failure in classic communication systems, in radio relay system, lack of precise localization involving an increase of intervention delays... Therefore TN decided to shift to a real time tracking system.

The system is consequently based on signal exchanges between mobiles (trucks and railway wagons) and 24 satellites (GPS and Inmarsat). The position is determinated by calculating the distance with regard to a minimum of 3 satellites. The signal is received by TN in a special equipped operations room where a

permanent operator follows the progress of transports. Important parameters are recorded permanently for restitution in case of incident/accident.

The results are immediate: an emission (ajustable between 2 and 30 minutes) allows to locate trucks within a maximum distance of 100 m. This is a guarantee for customers and authorities: TN knows exactly the routes, the possible delays, increases the traceability of its transports and can intervene more quickly when incidents or accidents occur.

In the future, TN foresees to adapt this system to all its transport means, and if possible to all casks, since a vehicle can contain one or several packagings. An ultimate aim is to develop an automatically assisted follow-up of the transports in order to help the operator in charge and in order to minimize the risk of mistake.

Waiting for these developments, TN has associated its system to the progress of transhipments of cargo, but also with the ability to activate of an emergency response plan.

The Emergency Response Plan may be activated in several different ways: it may be engaged because of an information from a supplier (trucks, railway, ships), from Safety Authorities, from a TN inspector, from the real time tracking operator, ... A transport executive is ready to intervene, 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. The ERP provides for the creation of a crisis section in the TN premises: this is a group of specialists in casks, radioprotection, materials, ... They meet in the TN special emergency room, where maps, technical documents concerning casks and materials are stored. From there, they have to follow and to monitor the intervention operations and, if it is necessary, organize multidisciplinary teams (casks engineers, radioprotection specialists, ...) and send specialists quickly to the scene of the accident.

The nuclear transportation industry has become complete and mature and demonstrates reliability on a global scale. In this context, TN, the cask engineering and transport subsidiary of COGEMA, is a pioneer: thanks to optimization of its logistic means, it has been able to anticipate the constant increase of transport operations whilst giving absolute priority to respect of existing regulations. It has also developed a high-tech technology approach which presents a double advantage. Not only it guarantees to its customers a precise progress of safety for their transports, but also it represents a means to persuade public of the safety of such radioactive transports.