How safe is transporting Nuclear Waste?

To date, over 3,000 casks carrying spent nuclear fuel have traveled over 1.6 million miles of rail and road since the 1960’s, without incident.

The spent fuel is most commonly shipped as a solid ceramic pellet about the size of a pencil eraser, secured inside an assembly of strong lead and other shielding materials lining a steel cask.

As originally expected, there will 3-5 casks on a train rail car, and about 200-300 casks will be shipped per year. Annual truck shipments could range from 50 to 90 per year, with one cask per truck.

Nevada can designate the highway and rail routes used for the shipment of spent fuel, and the DOE proposed a new rail line through rural Nevada that would bypass Reno and Las Vegas. This rail line would also be very helpful to economic development in rural Nevada, especially for the mining industry.

Governor O’Callahan established a condition in the 1975 act — which is still part of the law – that gives the Governor Veto power over any road and rail route.

Opponents say that transporting spent fuel is dangerous, but look at what is on our highways every day: Ammonia Chlorine, Sulfur Dioxide, Hydrogen Fluoride, Fuming Sulfuric Acid, Fuming Nitric Acid… Hundreds of thousands of gallons of these toxic chemicals are shipped across our roads and rails every year, with little notice. But transporting those chemicals is much more dangerous than transporting nuclear spent fuel rods. In 2005, nine people died when one tank car loaded with 90 tons of chlorine ruptured in a train wreck in Graniteville, South Carolina. Another 250 people were treated for chlorine exposure.

The risk for radiation exposure during transportation is extremely low. A person standing 100 feet from a vehicle that is carrying nuclear waste and moving 15 miles per hour would receive about 0.0004 millirem of radiation. A person flying roundtrip from LA to NYC receives about 2.5 millirem or 12,500 times more radiation.