Pending Schnabel Car Move

[ChuckCobleigh]

Only marginally trains related, but I include the link to the article because the railroad references are mostly accurate. It is almost like the reporter was listening and understood what was being said, or maybe he had some pre-existing knowledge.

 

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/energy-green/story/2020-04-30/a-770-ton-chunk-of-the-san-onofre-nuclear-power-plant-is-getting-shipped-to-utah

 

On the Schnabel car front, in the last 10 days, a car carrying a huge electric transformer was set out at La Plata, MO, from a westbound BNSF manifest. It is now gone. The YouTube commenters said that it was for a wind farm somewhere.

[Erik_Mag]

That's for SONGS unit 1 reactor vessel, which has been cooling down for some 35 years now. Moving the pressure vessels for units 2 and 3 is going to be a challenge, guessing it will be another 30 years before those get moved. I don't think those vessels would fit on any rail car.

[Overmod]

Erik_Mag

Moving the pressure vessels for units 2 and 3 is going to be a challenge, guessing it will be another 30 years before those get moved. I

Story says they will be 'cut into chunks' and then packaged, presumably as the Unit 1 vessel was, and allowed to reach "shippable" level of decay.  The story does not note if the '18-year' delay on SONGS Unit 1 was for radiological or political reasons.

[Erik_Mag]

I didn't recall seeing the plans for units 2 & 3 in the print edition of the story - the SDUT is the local paper.

The original steam generators for units 2 & 3 were shipped out by truck a few years back, there were a couple articles about the process. One was that the SG's were mildly radioactive. SONGS was decomissioned when the replacement SG's had vibration induced wear on the tubes, which led to the plant being decommisioned - a sorry thing as the 2.1GW would have been handy to have around.

I suspect the reactor vessel was quite a bit hotter due to neutron activation. Allowing 30+ years of cooling off time would cut a lot of the shorter half life activation products which typically be emitting higher energy gammas.