Verification and Validation of START: A Spent Nuclear Fuel Routing and Decision Support Tool

TL;DR

START is a web-based decision-support tool that visualizes and analyzes geospatial data for planning and operating large-scale spent nuclear fuel transportation, integrating various transport modes and site-specific data for diverse stakeholders.

Contribution

The paper introduces START, a comprehensive GIS-based tool that models multiple transportation options and site-specific data for radioactive waste shipment planning.

Findings

Supports diverse transportation modes including rail, truck, and barge.

Incorporates accident rates and travel speeds from recent data.

Designed for wide stakeholder use with flexible scenario analysis.

Abstract

START, the Stakeholder Tool for Assessing Radioactive Transportation is a web-based, decision-support tool developed by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to support the Office of Integrated Waste Management (IWM). Its purpose is to provide visualization and analysis of geospatial data relevant to planning and operating large-scale spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level radioactive waste transport to storage and/or disposal facilities. At present, the primary transport method for these shipments is expected to be via rail, operating predominantly on mainline track. For many shipment sites, however, access to this network will typically require initial use of a local/regional (short line) railroad or involve intermodal transport where the access leg is a movement performed by heavy-haul truck and/or barge. START has the ability to represent and analyze all of these transport options, with each transportation network segment containing site-specific physical and operational attributes. Of particular note are segment-specific accident rates and travel speeds, derived from recent data provided by the U.S. Department of Transportation, Bureau of Transportation Statistics, and other publicly available resources. DOE anticipates that START users will include federal, State, Tribal and local government officials; nuclear utilities; transportation carriers; support contractors; citizen scientists; and other stakeholders. For this reason, START is designed to enable the user to represent a wide range of operating scenarios and performance objectives, with an emphasis on providing flexibility. In doing so, the tool makes extensive use of geographic information systems (GIS) technology for performing spatial analysis and map creation.