SPECIAL ROUTING OF SPENT FUEL SHIPMENTS

Special rail routing of spent fuel shipments from commercial nuclear power plants to Away-From-Reactor (AFR) storage and disposal sites has been proposed as one means of reducing the consequences and severity of radioactive materials accidents in areas of high population density. Whether or not special rail routing of spent fuel shipments does indeed decrease radiation exposure levels under normal and accident transportation conditions and at what incremental cost forms the basis of this study funded by the Federal Railroad Administration. The study is divided into five areas: (1) developing analytical models for assessing the risks associated with both the normal and accident transport modes; (2) selecting representative origin to destination routing pairs using the normal transportation and accident risk models; (3) analyzing rail shipment costs for nuclear spent fuel; and (4) performing sensitivity analyses to identify parameters that critically affect the total exposure level. The major findings resulting from this study are: (1) the risk over the seven example routes is relatively small for the normal transport mode; (2) the risk associated with an accident is at least an order of magnitude larger than the normal transport dose in all cases and as such is the overriding contribution to the total expected transport dose; and (3) no beneficial cost versus dose reduction relationship was found for any of the routes studied.

• Corporate Authors:

  Systems Technology Laboratory, Incorporated

  2045 North 15th Street
  Arlington, VA  United States  22201

  Federal Railroad Administration

  1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Authors:
  • Berkowitz, R L
  • Shaver, D K
  • Rudd, T J
• Publication Date: 1982-5

Media Info

• Pagination: 144 p.

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Analysis; Costs; Mathematical models; Radiation hazards; Railroad transportation
• Uncontrolled Terms: Cost analysis
• Subject Areas: Finance; Railroads;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00365626
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: National Technical Information Service
• Report/Paper Numbers: DOT/FRA/ORD-82/27
• Contract Numbers: DOT-FR-4463
• Files: NTIS, USDOT
• Created Date: Nov 30 2003 12:00AM