In 2007, a severe transportation accident occurred near Oakland, California, at the interchange known as the “MacArthur Maze.” The accident involved a double tanker truck of gasoline overturning and bursting into flames. The subsequent fire reduced the strength of the supporting steel structure of an overhead interstate roadway causing the collapse of portions of that overpass onto the lower roadway in less than 20 minutes. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has analyzed what might have happened had a spent nuclear fuel transportation package been involved in this accident, to determine if there are any potential regulatory implications of this accident to the safe transport of spent nuclear fuel in the United States. This paper provides a summary of this effort, presents preliminary results and conclusions, and discusses future work related to the NRC’s analysis of the consequences of this type of severe accident.

In 2007, a severe transportation accident occurred near Oakland, California, on a section of Interstate 880 known as the “MacArthur Maze,” involving a gasoline tanker truck which impacted an overpass support column and burst into flames. The fire caused the collapse of portions of the Interstate 580 overpass onto the remains of the tractor-trailer. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, with assistance from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory Analyses, the Southwest Research Institute, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, examined the accident conditions in order to characterize the fire and collapse that occurred, analyzed material samples from the collapsed I-580 overpass as well as the gasoline tanker truck, and developed a fire model of the accident. This was followed by development of a finite element analysis model to determine the impacts of this accident on the thermal and structural performance of a spent nuclear fuel (SNF) transportation package. The analysis results will be used to determine any potential regulatory implications related to the safe transport of SNF in the U.S. This paper provides a summary of this effort and presents some preliminary results and conclusions.

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The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) completed an analysis of historical rail accidents (from 1975 to 2005) involving hazardous materials and long duration fires in the United States. The analysis was initiated to determine what types of accidents had occurred and what impact those types of accidents could have on the rail transport of spent nuclear fuel. The NRC found that almost 21 billion miles of freight rail shipments over a 30 year period had resulted in a small number of accidents involving the release of hazardous materials, eight of which involved long duration fires. All eight of the accidents analyzed resulted in fires that were less severe than the “fully engulfing fire” described as a hypothetical accident condition in the NRC regulations for radioactive material transport found in Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations, Part 71, Section 73. None of the eight accidents involved a release of radioactive material. This paper describes the eight accidents in detail and examines the potential effects on spent nuclear fuel transportation packages exposed to the fires that resulted from these accidents.