Part 1 of 3 Parts
Train robberies were the bane of railways in the Old West. Gangs of armed thieves chased and boarded trains to steal gold. Such criminal activity has vanished along with other symbols of the Old West. However, although the train robbers have vanished, there are still highly sensitive cargos being shipped by train that require heavy-duty, specialized protection.
The U.S. Navy is well known for aircraft carriers, submarines and fighter jets but is now adding a new armored train to its fleet of ships, planes and vehicles. This train is being developed to protect shipments of radioactive waste and house mission-relevel security personnel.
The Rail Escort Vehicle (REV) is a collaboration between the Navy and the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE). A prototype of the caboose left its assembly site at Vigor Industrial in Portland, Oregon this month and traveled to a testing location at the Transportation Technology Center (TTC) in Pueblo, Colorado. At the TTC, the REV will undergo a final series of tests. It is expected to enter service as soon as 2024. The REV will be attached to the DoE new Atlas railcar which was built to hold hundreds of tons of spent nuclear fuel. The trains will carry spent nuclear fuel rods from shipyards and propulsion facilities on the East and West Coasts to the Naval Reactor Facility in Idaho Falls, Idaho, for inspection and temporary storage before final disposal in dry casks in an underground geological repository.
The Atlas railcar is designed to carry up to seventeen different spent nuclear fuel containers that are called “dry casks” weighing between eighty two tons and two hundred ten tons each. The design for the new railcar included extensive dynamic computer modeling to simulate exactly how the railcar design would perform with different railcar components, different container attachment mechanisms and different contain weights.
Many details about the new caboose are classified, of course. But the DoE says it will provide “enhanced security, communication and surveillance capabilities,” when compared with the smaller yellow escort cabooses currently used for the mission.
Lee Smith is a spokesperson for the Navy Nuclear Propulsion Program (NNPP). He said that the final two-year phase of testing will involve multiple train cars. The tests will demonstrate compliance of the REV with the Association of American Railroads' S-2043 regulation. This regulation governs the transport of radioactive material by rail.
Smith said in an email that “As part of multiple-car testing, these railcars will be coupled together in a prototypic train setup and tested together. The majority of multiple-car testing will occur on closed test track loops at the Transportation Technology Center near Pueblo, CO but will also include testing on commercial rail track, culminating in a DOE demonstration run. The specific sequence and timing of multiple-car testing is currently being finalized.”
According to Smith, tests that have already been completed include demonstration for each railcar design. These include a “cask” car to actually carry the nuclear waste and a “buffer” car to accompany and protect the cask car.
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