The projected environmental impacts of transportation of radioactive material to the first United States repository site

The relative national environmental impacts of transporting spent fuel and other nuclear wastes to each of 9 candidate repository sites in the United States were analyzed for the 26-year period of repository operation. Two scenarios were examined for each repository: 1) shipment of 5-year-old spent fuel and Defence High-Level Waste (DHLW) directly from their points of origin to a repository (reference case); and 2) shipment of 5-year-old spent fuel to a Monitored Retrievable Storage (MRS) facility and shipment (by dedicated rail) of 10-year-old consolidated spent fuel from the MRS to a repository. Transport by either all truck or all rail from the points of origin were analyzed as bounding cases. The computational system used to analyze these impacts included the WASTES II logistics code and the RADTRAN III risk analysis code. The radiological risks for the reference case increased as the total shipment miles to a repository increased for truck; the risks also increased with mileage for rail but at a lower rate. For the MRS scenario the differences between repository sites were less pronounced for both modal options, because of the reduction in total shipment miles possible with the large dedicated rail casks. All the risks reported are small in comparison to the radiological risks due to 'natural background'