Preliminary assessment of costs and risks of transporting spent fuel by barge

Abstract

Transporting spent fuel and nuclear waste using barges in conjunction with trains is a viable option, and in several instances, barges may be preferred for shipping spent fuel from reactors that may not be served by railroads or that are served by railroads but near good ports. The intent of this study is to assess the cost and risk of barge transport from selected reactors that would be most likely to use the mode, using currently available data. This study was commissioned to support the environmental assessment of potential candidate nuclear waste repository sites. In this analysis, many conservative assumptions have been made where operational data are not available that tend to make risk values greater than would actually be expected. Even though (1) only the three repository sites that were recommended for characterization in the draft environmental assessments for repository site selection are evaluated and (2) several specific ports are identified by name, their selection for use in this analysis represents no Department of Energy policy decision regarding either the final repository locations or port selection, if barges were to be used on a large scale to support commercial nuclear waste management. This study will serve as a basis for future ones that will attempt to eliminate the conservative assumptions necessitated by the lack of data. Future efforts to characterize barge transport will be actively pursued to allow more knowledgable selection among modes for transporting spent fuel and high-level nuclear waste within the commercial nuclear waste management system. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Edwin L. Wilmot provided overall guidance and helpful comments. Yu Chien Yuan reviewed the final version of the document, and editing was done by Shari K. Zussman.

Longitudinal review of state-level accident statistics for carriers of interstate freight

“…;on order to convert these values to units consistent with those used in the highway and rail transport analysis, ton-miles were first converted to ton-kilometers by multiplication, then divided by a barge shipment weight that would be representative of future spent-fuel movements in large casks. Tobin, Meshkov, and Jones (1985) have estimated this value to be about 5{)0 short tons. Thu_ dividing each waterway's ton-kilometer total by 500 yields the shipment-kilometer denominator needed for computing the unit-risk factor.…”

State-level accident rates of surface freight transportation : a reexamination.

“…The latter publication reports tonnage by state and tonmiles by waterway type (coastwise, lakewise, internal, and intraport-the last of which has been combined with coastwise). The 500-short-ton reference value is the same as that applied in the previous study (Tobin, Meshkov, and Jones 1985). As in the prior work, ton-mile estimates were divided by the 500-ton shipment weight, then converted to shipment ton-kilometers.…”

Data base of accident and agricultural statistics for transportation risk assessment

“…Movement statistics are reported in tons and ton-miles by waterway; in order to convert these values to units consistent with those used in the highway and rail transport analysis, ton-miles were first converted to ton-kilometers by multiplication, then divided by a barge shipment weight that would be representative of future spent fuel movements in large casks. Tobin, Meshkov, and Jones (1985) have estimated this value to be about 500 short tons. Thus, dividing each waterway's ton-kilometer total by 500 yields the shipment-kilometer denominator needed for computing the unit-risk factor.…”

“…This value excludes fatalities due to railroad "incidents" (on-track events in which thij railroad property damage does not exceed the reporting threshold) because comparable truck "incidents" are not included in the OMC 50-T file. Tobin, Meshkov, and Jones 1985).…”