IF YOU discount terror attacks and fires, then transporting spent nuclear fuel to Yucca Mountain in Nevada or elsewhere for storage would be safe, or so said members of the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) last week.
Disposing of waste from the US鈥檚 103 operating nuclear plants would require daily shipments for 20 years. According to the NAS study, the material could be moved in 55,000 truckloads, or 9600 dedicated trainloads and 1000 truckloads. The panel 鈥渕uch preferred the rail option鈥�, says its chairman Neal Lane, both because of the greatly reduced number of trips and because rail lines are less prone to disruptions such as traffic jams.
Concerns remained, however, over the safety of the casks containing spent fuel in the event of a hot, sustained fire. Such fires do happen: in at least two cases trains carrying petroleum-filled tankers burned for days before fire fighters got them under control. The only way to minimise that risk for now, the panel concluded, is to make sure such petroleum trains go nowhere near trains carrying nuclear waste.
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The panel did not assess the dangers posed by terrorist attacks.
