CHM333:

Effect of Yucca Mountain on Nuclear Waste Transport

Source

Yucca Mountain will drastically change the outlook of nuclear waste transport in the United States. The shipping of commercial spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive wastes will now travel from 72 commercial sites and 5 DOE sites across the nation to Nevada. This section of the web site seeks to describe the impact that Yucca Mountain will have on the transport of nuclear wastes. The information in this section is summarized from the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) compiled by the Department of Energy (DOE) for the Yucca Mountain Project.

Transport Routes

As mentioned above, waste would be transported all over the country to Yucca Mountain. The waste will be shipped either by truck or rail. In their study of possible routes to be used for transportation, the DOE considered two possible scenarios- mostly legal-weight truck (trucks weighing less than 80,000 pounds that can operate on public highways without need for a permit) and mostly rail.

The mostly legal-weight truck scenario assumes that most of the spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive wastes would be transported to Nevada by legal-weight trucks traveling on mostly on the U.S. Interstate Highway system. The exception to this would be spent nuclear fuel from the Navy. This waste would be shipped from the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory to Nevada by rail. Once in Nevada, the legal-weight trucks will carry on to Yucca Mountain. The most probable route for the trucks to follow is to arrive into Nevada using Interstate Highway 15, then traveling over the Las Vegas Beltway, and finally proceeding North on U.S. Highway 95 to Yucca Mountain.

The mostly rail scenario assumes that most of the waste will be transferred to Nevada by rail. The only exception to this would be the commercial sites that do not have the capacity to load the larger rail shipping casks. These sites would be permitted to use legal-weight to make their shipments. Commercial sites that can load larger rail shipping casks, but do not have access to a rail line would be permitted to use heavy-haul trucks or barges to transport their waste to the nearest rail line. Once in Nevada, there are no rail lines going to Yucca Mountain, so the waste must either be loaded onto heavy-haul trucks at a transfer station or rail lines must be constructed. The DOE is currently evaluating 5 different new rail line designs or three possible transfer stations.3

Likely rail and highway routes for the transport of radioactive materials to Nevada. Source

Effects on National Transportation

Results of the DOE study on the effects of radioactive materials transportation to Nevada. Source

In analyzing the effect of the Yucca Mountain Project on transportation throughout the nation, the DOE separated the two scenarios and produced results for both of them. These results are shown to the right.

The DOE concluded that the disparity between the two scenarios is the difference in magnitude of shipments per year for each of the scenarios. While the mostly legal-weight truck scenario would produce about 2200 shipments annually, the mostly rail scenario would only produce about 450 annual shipments. This is the main reason for the difference in incident-free latent cancer deaths. There are simply more chances to be exposed to radioactive materials in the mostly legal-weight truck scenario.

The DOE also calculated the deaths of a maximum reasonably foreseeable accident. This calculation entailed a comprehensive analysis of possible accident scenarios that could occur based on any combination of weather conditions, local population, and transportation mode. While the DOE did not analyze every possible accident scenario (as that would be impossible), they did analyze several practical accident scenarios, such as crashes occurring at 60-90 MPH, exposure to fire and temperatures of 700-1000 degrees Celsius, or many more possible scenarios. From this the DOE selected the scenarios with the greatest consequences and had a probability of occurrence greater than 1 in 1 million years. The disparity between the two scenarios is because of the difference in container size between truck and rail containers. The larger cask sizes used in the mostly rail scenario simply create a larger potential for disaster.4