Transportation Experience in the U.S. with Spent Fuel and Other Hazardous Materials

Abstract

This paper presents a comparison of the transportation safety of spent nuclear fuel and several nonnuclear hazardous materials. Three separate analyses were performed on different bases: health effects experienced per million metric ton kilometers of each material shipped, health effects experienced per million kilometers of standard size truck and rail shipments of each material, and health effects experienced in the maximum consequence transportation accident experienced to date with each material. Actual safety records kept by the U.S. Department of Transportation provided the health effect data for the analyses. A second spent fuel case was calculated based upon the estimated health effects of vent fuel transportation from a Sandia Laboratories study. In all three analyses, the spent fuel risks calculated were found to be of the same order of magnitude or lower than those associated with other more commonly transported nonnuclear hazardous materials.