In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

| 99 Transportation of NuclearWaste Written by Bernadette M. West, based in part on an interview with Mark Abkowitz, with comments by Penelope A. Fenner-Crisp Background Transport is a critical part of the discussion involving nuclear materials and the waste generated in the course of their use. Most nuclear materials are transported several times during their lifetime. For example, nuclear materials used in the fuel cycle are transported from mining to milling, from milling to conversion to enrichment, from enrichment to fuel fabrication to power generation, with the spent fuel then moved to temporary storage on-site and eventually to permanent storage off-site. In the United States today, spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste is temporarily being stored at 131 sites in 39 states, including U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) environmental cleanup sites as well as commercial facilities that are continuing to produce spent fuel while generating the nation ’s electricity supply. Waste generated by these facilities must be transported in order to proceed with environmental cleanup at DOE sites and to create space for new waste continuously being generated at commercial sites. In the United States nuclear waste is transported every year, primarily by highway, rail, and water (although sometimes by air), to temporary and permanent repositories, depending on the type of waste. The volume of these shipments could notably increase in the future if the industry were to expand a great deal and if a single permanent repository for nuclear waste were to be opened. The transportation of nuclear waste is regulated jointly by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). The NRC sets standards for packaging design and performance standards as well as protecting shipments while in transit. They regulate the testing of a shipment before it leaves a site to check for leaks and to ensure that radiation levels are within safe limits. The NRC works together with 32 states that have agreements with the NRC for handling certain nuclear waste. While nuclear materials are in transport, the DOT then handles regula- 100 | The Reporter’s Handbook: Briefs tion of the shipment. They are responsible for training personnel who handle the transport (including drivers), as well as for labeling, shipping papers, placarding , loading, and unloading. DOT establishes control route selection and is responsible for inspecting vehicle condition. The packaging, storage, and transportation of radioactive waste from nuclear weapons production and site cleanup by the DOE follows standards set by the DOT and the NRC. For more detailed information, including some of the history about the requirements and processes, our experts recommend examining the Web sites of the Licensing Support Network (www.lsnnet.gov), which supports the NRC’s missions, and the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (www.nwtrb. gov), which is an agency of the federal government charged with independent scientific and technical oversight of the DOE’s program for managing and disposing of high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel. Identifying the Issues Transportation of nuclear waste must be understood in terms of the different types of radioactivity that have been and still are being generated. Spent fuel is produced when electricity is generated in nuclear power production. Nuclear fuel generates heat when it undergoes fission inside a nuclear reactor and this heat is used to generate steam, which then passes through a turbine and turns a generator. When nuclear fuel no longer generates enough heat to generate electricity it is considered “spent,” although as noted several other places in the book, it can be reused. The highly radioactive spent fuel remains contain fission products, unused uranium and plutonium, and various other transuranic (TRU) elements with an atomic number greater than that of uranium. Approximately 1% to 5% of the fissionable uranium in a light water reactor is used before the reactor is refueled with fresh uranium. The waste must be removed from the reactor and put into spent fuel cooling pools inside the containment building until the spent fuel is safe to handle. It is then certified by the NRC for interim on-site storage, and, finally, it is prepared for transport in an NRC certified transportation cask and placed in a repository for safe underground disposal. Spent fuel comes from commercial nuclear power plants, domestic research reactors, nuclear-powered U.S. naval warships, DOE-run research and defense reactors, reactor design testing, and energy and medical research. High-level waste (also referred to as HLW) results from the reprocessing of...

Share