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Questions and Answers: High-Level Nuclear Waste Shipments

What is in a high-level nuclear waste cask?

Irradiated fuel from commercial nuclear utility operation of nuclear power reactors. Three years inside the reactor core makes the fuel over a million times more radioactive than unused fuel. The total--the Department of Energy projects 85,000 metric tonnes by the time the existing reactors close--contains 95% of all of the radioactivity of the Nuclear Age. The shipping program and the Bills in Congress that would authorize it, will transfer the liability for this waste from the nuclear utilities to the US taxpayer. It will take thirty years, or more, of continuous shipping to move the fuel from reactor sites to Nevada. The first year and each year after, more irradiated fuel will move than all the shipments of this material to date. Today, only about 35% of the projected 85,000 metric tonnes has been generated.

How dangerous is this stuff?

Unshielded, irradiated reactor fuel that has been stored for 10 years will deliver a lethal dose to anyone within a meter in less than three minutes. Radiation, even lethal levels, cannot be detected by human senses. Splitting uranium atoms releases heat that is used to make electricity, it also increases radioactivity. The broken pieces of uranium atoms are lighter elements called fission products. These include strontium-90, cobalt-60 and cesium-137, all sources of intensely penetrating radiation. Cesium is chemically similar to potassium. If released to the environment, it concentrates in the muscle and gonads in the body, as well as in cow's and mother's milk. Cesium can be concentrated by the food chain. Humans, being at the top of the food chain, may receive an ingested dose of cesium thousands of times higher than the concentration in the immediate environment. The intense gamma radiation of fission products is an immediate danger to those exposed in an accident. A large rail cask holds as much cesium as would be released by 200 Hiroshima bombs. The total shipping program will move almost 2 million times more cesium than was released at Hiroshima.Cesium is just a fraction of the radioactivity in the shipping casks and in the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima August 6, 1945.

What about long term impacts?

Each cask contains radioactive elements like plutonium that will persist if released to the environment for hundreds of thousands of years. An average rail cask will carry about 174 pounds of plutonium. A total of almost 2 million pounds of plutonium will be mobilized on the roads and rails nationally. Plutonium is well-known as a carcinogen. For reference, a single pound of plutonium could cause cancer in every person alive today, if it were divided and deposited in the lung tissue. If instead, all 2 million pounds of plutonium were released to the environment, (lowering the dose), there would be at least 1,500,000 fatal cancers from plutonium 239 alone. There would also be many non-fatal cancers as well as a host of non-cancer effects, genetic effects, sterility and other human suffering. Other species would also be affected. The total plutonium 239 in the shipping campaign is 128 times more than the total released to the environment by below-ground weapons tests, worldwide.

Is there radiation risk, even if there is no accident in my community?

Yes. Federal regulation allows radiation to penetrate the shielding of the transport cask at a rate up to 10 millirems an hour measured 2 meters from the cask. This would be comparable to a chest x-ray for each hour that a worker or a member of the public was close to the cask. Traffic jams or stops for fueling are situations that could lead to repeated or ongoing radiation exposures for individuals living and working along transport routes. Cumulative low-dose radiation exposure impose a measurable impact in a population. Health studies have shown that this type of exposure causes more cancer per unit of dose than acute exposures in the higher dose range. If a person is exposed to 10 millirems, once a year, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission assigns a 1 in 2850 chance of fatal cancer from that lifetime exposure.

What is "Multi-Purpose Canister Base Case?"

A scenario defined by the Department of Energy for projections about the shipping campaign. It assumes the use of the largest containers that are possible at each site (rail preferred over truck). The Multi-Purpose Canister (MPC) would seal huge amounts of waste--the large one holds 21,000 pounds--in a container at the reactor site. This canister is then to be put in a transport overpack for shipping. The large rail MPC holds over 20 times the radioactive waste as the old truck casks. The MPC has not yet been built, tested or licensed. To date, no transport cask has had full-scale physical testing. The Department of Energy has instead relied on computer simulations. The scenario also assumes no new reactors. Current reactor operations are projected to end in 2030.

What about the Bottom Line--the Economic Factors?

Part of routine transport for this dangerous material is local preparedness. Local emergency responders will in nearly all cases be the first to assess an accident scene. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) estimated in 1981 (NUREG/CR-2225) that the price tag for a fully prepared state emergency response system would cost $5.6 million annually (1981 dollars). This does not include infrastructure improvements and maintenance that are likely associated with state efforts to designate alternate routes. Congress is making no direct effort to ensure any level of funding will be available. Other economic impacts include cost of unrecovered health impacts, negative effects on business, tourism, property value and property marketability, and unclear liability for these effects.

NRC also made a 1980 estimate of the costs associated with an accident. Even a small fraction of the radioactivity in a single shipping cask were released in an urban area, the clean up costs would be on the order of $2 billion dollars. "Clean up" means transferring the radioactivity somewhere else. Though it started as high-level waste, clean-up from contamination would currently be designated "low-level" waste. It is not clear who would pay for the clean-up or disposal from a high-level civilian waste transport accident. In most cases "clean-up" would scar the site or alternately, quite a bit of radioactivity may be left behind as a 'sacrifice zone'.

Factoids:

Total "Base Case" projected rail casks: 9,421; total truck casks: 6,217. 15,638 casks total.

If Congress lifts the cap on how much waste could go to an "interim storage site" and if instead of the "MPC Base-Case" scenario, only trucks are used, there would be over 60,000 shipments nationwide.

An average rail car carries 174 pounds of plutonium. A truck cask carries 38 pounds of plutonium.

The shipment of 85,000 MTU of high-level waste will also move 1,800,000 pounds of plutonium.

The plutonium 239 alone in these shipments could generate over 1,500,000 cancers if released. This amount of plutonium 239 is more than 120 times greater than the total released to date by below-ground nuclear weapons testing, worldwide.

The total of 85,000 metric tonnes that is to be shipped contains nearly 2 million times more cesium than the Hiroshima bomb.

10/17/95