Environmental Impacts of Transportation to the Potential Repository at Yucca Mountain

The Environmental Impact Statement for a Geologic Repository for the Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste at Yucca Mountain, Nye County, Nevada analyzes a Proposed Action to construct, operate, monitor, and eventually close a geologic repository for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. As part of the Proposed Action, the EIS analyzes the potential impacts of transporting commercial and DOE spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste to Yucca Mountain from 77 sites across the United States. The analysis includes information on the comparative impacts of transporting these materials by truck and rail and discusses the impacts of building a rail line or using heavy-haul trucks to move rail casks from a mainline railroad in Nevada to the site. This paper provides an overview of the analyses and the potential impacts of these transportation activities. The potential transportation impacts were looked at from two perspectives: transportation of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste by legal-weight truck or by rail on a national scale and impacts specific to Nevada from the transportation of these materials from the State borders to the Yucca Mountain site. In order to address the range of impacts that could result from the most likely modes, legal-weight truck and rail, the EIS employed two analytical scenarios--mostly legal-weight truck and mostly rail. Estimated national transportation impacts were based on 24 years of transportation activities. Approximately 8 fatalities could occur from all causes in the nationwide general population from incident-free transportation activities of the mostly legal-weight truck scenario and about 4 from the mostly rail scenario. The analysis examined the radiological consequences under the maximum foreseeable accident scenario and also overall accident risk. The overall accident risk over the 24 year period would be about 0.0002 latent cancer fatality for the mostly legal-weight truck scenario and about 0.0005 latent cancer fatality for the mostly rail scenario. The maximum reasonably foreseeable accident scenario resulted in 0.55 latent cancer fatality for the legal-weight truck case and 5 latent cancer fatalities in the case of mostly rail. The EIS also analyzed the impacts associated with the transportation of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste in the State of Nevada. This included: constructing a branch rail line and using it to ship waste to the repository; upgrading highways in Nevada for use by heavy-haul trucks; constructing and operating an intermodal transfer station; and transporting personnel and materials to support construction and operation of the repository.