Should feds crash a nuclear waste transport pack to gain your trust? ...Middle East

Welcome to the “Let’s Blow Up A Transportation Overpack for Nuclear Waste” show!

This show is in development by the U.S. Department of Energy, has a budget of about $10 million, and aims to ease the fears of a public that has grown increasingly hostile to official expertise (not to mention suspicious of basic science).

Weigh in folks: Should the heavy transit overpacks that shield radioactive waste be smashed into walls? Hit by trains? Dropped from on high? Immersed in deep water? Burned at high temperatures? A combination of these — all at once?

“Our aim is to build public trust and confidence,” said Miriam Juckett, an advisor on spent nuclear fuel management with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, acknowledging public skepticism during an online meeting Jan. 8. “The DOE is listening.”

Turns out that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s process for certifying these behemoths — which will someday encase waste from San Onofre, Diablo Canyon and scores of other nuclear plants as locals finally wave goodbye — is highly technical and a bit beyond the public gaze.

So, the Package Performance Demonstration project, as it’s officially called, aims to publicly showcase the safety and resiliency of these NRC-sanctioned overpacks, thus easing worried minds. It’s not exactly a cheap exercise, Juckett said, but DOE is willing to make the investment.

What would make a test credible to you? Poke around the website at curie.pnnl.gov/DOE-PPD and tell the PowersThatBe what mayhem you’d like to see by sending an email to [email protected]. Comments must be received by Jan. 31.

No terrorism

Will this make a difference with the most devout skeptics?

Public test scenarios will not include terrorism or sabotage, Juckett said. DOE understands that those are important, but it would not be able to share information gleaned from such tests with the public, and the goal here is to be open and transparent.

Demonstrations will not subject overpacks to more severe conditions than they were designed to withstand.

And, of course, the waste canisters inside the overpacks will not contain real spent fuel — but they’ll replicate actual loaded conditions in terms of weight and other variables.

Demonstration tests will likely be live-streamed, results will be measurable and data will be shared with the public, Juckett said.

“If we can answer people’s concerns about how they’ll perform, if we can help first responders and community leaders feel confident about how these work, they can share that with their communities,” she said.

That familiarity will be helpful when someday, if we’re smart and lucky, the United States has a centralized place to park the hundreds of millions of pounds of highly radioactive nuclear waste piling up at scores of commercial reactor sites around the country. The waste will leave plants like San Onofre and Diablo Canyon by specially-designed trains like the Atlas rail car, or by truck, or by barge, en route to its new home.

Many Southern Californians have expressed profound doubts about the safety of transporting radioactive waste, however. At San Onofre Community Engagement Panel meetings, critics have insisted it could not be done.

Juckett tried to get in front of all that.

The nuclear program began here in the 1950s, and about 95,000 metric tons of waste are now in storage, she said. “We have a well-established regulatory framework for transporting spent nuclear fuel. … It’s important to note that, even though there’s not a destination right now, it has been moving across the U.S. for quite some time.”

That’s the work of the NRC and the U.S. Department of Transportation. Waste canisters are inserted into those thick, heavy, shielded overpacks, which are then loaded onto specially designed transport vehicles like the Atlas, for the move from Point A to Point B. The NRC certifies the transportation overpacks, subjecting them to physical tests and the computer-modeled varieties; the DOT sets routes and standards for the journeys; and the DOE plans to add to the knowledge base with this project.

The “Let’s Blow Up a Transportation Overpack” show is not exactly new. There have been various episodes over the past half-century in this and other countries. Four impact tests were done at Sandia National Laboratories in the 1970s. The United Kingdom’s “Operation Smash Hit” on a full-sized overpack followed suit in the 1980s. Drop tests were done in Germany in the 2000s. Vintage videos show overpacks crashing, dropping, drowning, burning.

There have been few serious mishaps linked to the transport of Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF) and High-Level Waste (HLW), according to a somewhat dated review done for the DOE.

“Accidents have been infrequent in SNF and HLW transportation, and most have been minor accidents such as low-speed derailments or minor traffic accidents,” it said. “Instances of radioactive contamination on SNF and HLW casks and the vehicles that carry them have occurred more frequently than transportation accidents, but these instances were still infrequent when compared to the overall number of shipments which were made in several countries over the years.

“Contamination was found on shipments within the U.S. in the 1970s and 1980s and in Europe in the 1990s. After many studies, improvements in operating procedures at nuclear facilities, and enhanced regulatory oversight and enforcement of contamination limits, instances of radiological contamination of equipment have become less frequent.”

A sampling of mishaps

One of the most serious accidents happened in the U.S. in 1971, when a truck carrying a loaded cask veered off the road to avoid a head-on collision.

The truck left the road, the driver was killed and the cask was thrown clear off the trailer and into a ditch, the report said. The cask suffered superficial damage to two bolts, the paint and the thermal insulation, but released no radioactive material and the radioactive fuel within was undamaged, it said.

In 1978, a trailer carrying spent mixed oxide fuel buckled under the weight of the cask, but there was no damage to the cask and no release.

In 1983, a truck carrying a loaded cask was involved in an accident in which the tractor separated from its intermediate axles but remained connected to the trailer. The cask was not damaged.

In 1987, a train carrying core debris from the Three Mile Island-2 reactor hit a car. The driver of the car was injured, the locomotive suffered minor damage, the train was delayed 45 minutes, but the casks were not damaged and did not release any material.

In 2007, the caboose and buffer car of a train carrying spent fuel derailed while moving slowly, at some 5 miles per hour.

Recently in Germany, thousands have protested such shipments, the report said. “Although there have not been any radiological effects as a result these protests, injuries have occurred, shipments have been delayed and millions of dollars in extra costs have been incurred.”

We remember when people chained themselves to the heavy machinery trying to build the toll roads here in O.C. some 25 years ago, and suspect there could be similar passions aroused here. But what’s the other choice? To leave it on the bluffs at the ocean in an earthquake zone near millions of people forever?

Get your thoughts in to the DOE. For the record, we’d like to see the overpack smashing into a wall at high speed. Seems like something from “Beavis and Butthead,” no?

“We understand mistakes made in past with big projects,” said Juckett. “We’re looking to identify how to make this successful and avoid missteps. We want to be as open and transparent as possible.”

If all goes according to plan, the demonstration will take place in the next couple years. Getting it to a new home? With the hundreds of millions of pounds that have piled up over more than a half-century, it will take just about that long to move it, the DOE said.

Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Should feds crash a nuclear waste transport pack to gain your trust? )

Also on site :

• Miss Manners: His driving was terrifying. Was I wrong to ask him to slow down?
• The Implications of GLP-1s on Women’s Healthcare
• Woman kicked out of Magic Circle for ‘amusing’ male disguise trick gets back in