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Pittsburgh may be a way station on nuke rail route

(The following story by Carl Prine appeared on the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review website on July 26. Scott Palmer is Chairman of the BLETs Oregon State Legislative Board.)

PITTSBURGH, Pa. A Department of Energy study details how the federal government might ship 7,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste through Pittsburgh to Nevada's proposed Yucca Mountain repository.

Buried deep inside the recently released study, maps show that Pittsburgh for 24 years beginning in 2018 would be the rail corridor through which 1,107 massive casks containing spent nuclear fuel from nine commercial reactors would pass.

The department proposes using 372 trains to transport atomic waste from reactors at Three Mile Island, Susquehanna and Limerick facilities in Pennsylvania; Salem and Hope Creek in New Jersey; North Anna in Virginia; and Calvert Cliffs in Maryland.

That breaks down to about 15 or 16 "glow trains" moving through Pittsburgh every year through 2042. If Congress approves it, the number of shipments could double through 2067.

Why some are concerned: In an age of terrorism and following non-nuclear accidents in recent years that unleashed deadly gas along the rails in Graniteville, S.C. and Bexar County, Texas, critics fear that cities like Pittsburgh -- dubbed "high threat urban areas" by the Department of Homeland Security -- could become cancer zones killing tens of thousands of people in the wake of a derailment or sabotage.

"The bottom line is that it can be done safely, but that doesn't mean it will be done safely, whether we're talking about accidents or terrorism," said Robert Halstead, transportation director of Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects.

Others, however, believe such fears are overblown and only impede a program designed to sweep nearly a half-century's accumulation of atomic debris out of 72 commercial reactors and five government labs nationwide.

"The facts speak for themselves. A staggering amount of spent fuel has been shipped, not only in this country but around the world, for 40 years. No one has ever been killed by anything released from these nuclear packages," said Robert H. Jones, a California engineering consultant to federal nuclear agencies and one of the designers of atomic shipping containers designed to withstand major accidents.

Jones believes the chance of anyone in Pittsburgh ever being harmed by a nuclear fuel shipment is equal to "being hit by a meteor, in the range of possibilities."

Tasks for casks

Tilting the scales at about 125 tons each, nuclear casks look like enormous spools turned on their sides. To prevent radioactive rays from escaping and killing everyone around them in less than two minutes, they're lined with steel, concrete, lead and exotic materials. The federal government wants to transport up to five casks at a time on a "dedicated train" hauled by two locomotives and protected by armed guards.

If the plan is approved, up to 12 percent of all nuclear casks destined for shipment nationwide would travel through Allegheny County. One out of every four of the nation's nuclear casks would go through Pennsylvania, and 43 of the state's 67 counties would witness the freight pass-through.

According to the report, Erie would receive 827 casks of nuclear waste in 272 shipments from 12 sites as far east as the Maine Yankee commercial reactor. Interstate 90 would carry 313 trucks bound from New York's Ginna reactor. Another 344 trucks laden with nuclear canisters would drive Interstate 80 from the Pilgrim, Mass., reactor through Clarion County.

The report's proposed paths through Pennsylvania largely were determined by the quality of railroad tracks and the fact that traffic signals and switching levers can be controlled mainly from secure headquarters. Those features won't force conductors to make long stops or rumble down poorly maintained lines. According to the study's maps, the bulk of Pennsylvania's nuclear freight would be toted by rail giants CSX and Norfolk-Southern.

"Unfortunately, as common carriers, we have the obligation to haul the stuff. We're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place," said spokesman Tom White of the Association of American Railroads.

The trade group represents CSX, Norfolk Southern and other large rail corporations that control about 97 percent of track freight nationwide. These carriers advised the feds to ship nuclear cargo on dedicated trains using the latest safety technology and the highest security, and they're pleased to see their recommendations finally accepted. Federal law protects railroads from any legal liability from radioactive spills during transport.

"The routes choose themselves," said Scott Palmer, an Oregon Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers & Trainmen representative on the federal task force addressing Yucca Mountain transportation issues. He's planning a conference for the nation's major rail labor leaders so that they can begin to coordinate education and certification of workers, with the goal of ensuring that only the best trained and most experienced personnel handle atomic cargo.

In a written response to questions posed by the Tribune-Review, Department of Energy spokesman Allen Benson insisted final routes won't be selected until a "collaborative process" unfolds that includes the major railroads, the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency and the state Department of Environmental Protection.

Pennsylvania officials said they have monitored proposed nuclear shipment plans for years.

"It's been moving slowly, but it's coming along. Do we still have some issues? Yes," said Rich Janati, nuclear safety chief for the Department of Environmental Protection. "Our major issue is the fact that Pennsylvania is going to experience so many shipments, and we've also been looking at how we select the right routes, the training of emergency responders, funding for local communities for their emergency responders.

"I'd say those are our issues, but there is time to work that out."

Killer cancers?

The shipments in 2018 won't be the first time Pittsburgh has hosted nuclear material. Waste from the 1979 meltdown at Three Mile Island's Reactor 2 traveled sporadically until 1990 through Allegheny County to the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory. Officials at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Department of Energy and the Federal Railroad Administration told the Trib that the public outcry over those shipments helped sculpt the long-term plans they're developing today.

Local officials said Pittsburgh is better prepared than most cities to contain a potential calamity. Emergency crews get specialized training and equipment to mitigate fallout from a meltdown at Beaver Valley's reactor in Shippingport. Federal money was used to teach local responders how to deal with a terrorist "dirty bomb" triggered by terrorists.

"We know the Yucca Mountain shipments will probably be coming through here. We knew from our experiences at TMI and because of the way the railroads go that it would all probably be coming Downtown," said Raymond DeMichiei, Pittsburgh's deputy director of emergency management. "But that makes sense. They want the shipments to go on the best maintained tracks. The best maintained tracks are those that carry passengers. Passengers get on and off in big cities."

City Council President Doug Shields said there's enough time for the mayor or council to investigate whether they can prod the federal agencies and railroads to reroute atomic shipments around Allegheny County, avoiding highly populated neighborhoods entirely. The concept is modeled on an attempt by Washington officials to force railroads to move toxic gas cargo away from potential terrorist targets in the nation's capital.

"It was a matter of concern before, during the Three Mile Island shipments, and it still is. Washington, D.C., tried to enact an ordinance to restrict hazardous cargo moving through areas terrorists would want to target. If we can't do that at the local level, where is the federal and state government on this issue?" said Shields.

Federal officials say there might be no need to reroute because the nuclear casks are "robust," and the procedures designed to pack and ship them are safe and secure.

The process: Spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste will be loaded while underwater into the large rail or truck containers. Workers will drain liquid from the casks and refill them with pressurized gases, such as helium. Then they'll weld or rivet shut the vessels and load them onto the trains or onto trucks with beds up to 60 feet long and capable of hauling more than 115,000 pounds of nuclear cargo.

Federal agencies believe these containers can withstand nearly any punishment, including a fiery jetliner crash. They predict less than a 1 in 333 million chance annually of any "incident" spewing the radioactive guts of a container, and if the innards do spill out no more than nine deaths from latent cancer exposure would follow, according to the federal study.

"Even severe rail and truck accidents are highly unlikely to breach the casks. In the rare instance in which an accident would be so severe that its contents would be released, the latent cancer fatality rate would be indistinguishable from the normal cancer incidence rate in the general population," said the Department of Energy's Benson.

In a report prepared by Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects, however, physicists said up to 40,868 people could die of cancers caused by a ruptured container, perhaps by terrorists smart enough to use different types of bombs to free the radioactivity.

"They've ignored the science they didn't like. And they assumed that the bad guys would use only one explosive. If you assume they use two explosives, their estimates go out the window. All the military experts we've talked to said it would be much, much worse, but their nuclear engineers have disagreed with them," said Halstead of the Nevada agency.

His gravest fear: What the federal study termed "a long-duration, high-temperature fire that would engulf a cask," like the 2001 Baltimore Rail Tunnel fire. He and other critics worry that flames would melt the lead shields separating deadly gamma rays from human flesh, and smoke would churn the skies with atomic particles, the wind spreading cancer and causing up to $10 billion in cleanup costs, or the abandonment of whole neighborhoods.

Both the federal Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which designed and tested the casks, say the containers would survive, intact, and that any cleanup costs likely would involve only the damage to trains or trucks.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008



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Federal Railroad Administration nuclear shipment Q&A

(The following story by Carl Prine appeared on the Pittsburgh Tribune-review website on July 26.)

PITTSBURGH, Pa. Federal Railroad Administration spokesman Steven Kulm answers questions posed by the Trib about proposed nuclear shipments through Pennsylvania.

Question: What safeguards are put in place to ensure safe transit of spent nuclear fuel or other atomic shipments through heavily populated areas, such as Pittsburgh?

Answer: Extensive regulations currently exist that address the safe and secure transportation of radioactive materials. U.S. DOT regulations contained throughout 49 CFR Parts 100 to 185 already address hazard communication, the type of packaging allowed for the transport of this material, proper preparation of the package for transport, radiation level limitations and recently, even rail routing requirements for Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF) and High-Level Radioactive Waste (HLRW). These regulatory requirements are largely based on International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safety standards. In addition, taking a proactive approach to railroad safety, FRA recognized the need to enhance its inspection policy and procedures for the transport of SNF and HLRW by rail to ensure that the railroad industry's outstanding safety record for moving nuclear material shipments continues unabated despite the significant increase in nuclear materials shipments. In regard to the shipments of SNF from the Three Mile Island (TMI) reactor in the late 1980's, FRA developed and applied an inspection policy focusing available resources for the TMI shipments to ensure safe and secure rail transportation of them. In 1998, FRA updated this already existing policy and developed the Safety Compliance Oversight Plan (SCOP) for transportation of SNF and HLRW, which set forth enhanced FRA procedures to specifically address the safety of these rail shipments. FRA believes this policy is necessary to ensure the safety of future rail shipments of SNF and HLRW which are predicted/expected to increase significantly irrespective of the use of Yucca Mountain to permanently store such materials.

Click here (http://www.fra.dot.gov/us/printcontent/1659) to read the April 25, 2002 testimony by former FRA Administrator Allan Rutter before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee that describes in more detail the role of FRA in overseeing rail shipments of SNF and HLRW and the measures included in the SCOP.

Q: Although DOE distanced itself a bit in the report by suggesting that these routes are not final, they certainly are the fastest and safest lines available for the transportation of nuclear waste material, and in the case of the CSXT/Norfolk-Southern lines that converge in Allegheny County, the pathway used before for similar shipments. Is there a possibility that DOE could change these routes? What input would be needed from Pittsburgh, where the city council president has said he would like to explore ways to reroute the material around Allegheny County?

A: SNF and other high-level radioactive material shipments are covered by the new Interim Final Rule on Rail Hazmat Routing issued by the U.S. DOT Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and published on April 16, 2008 (see attached summary document and full text). Under these regulations, railroads are required to perform a comprehensive and methodical safety/security risk analysis to determine the safest and most secure route to move the most dangerous hazardous materials and then implement that selected route by September 1, 2009. In collecting the relevant data for analysis, each railroad will seek to obtain information from state and local officials regarding security risks to high-consequence locations along or in proximity to those routes. Under the rule, railroads are to collect this and other data starting July 1, 2008, to be used to conduct a safety/security risk analysis of the preferred route(s) currently used, and the potential hazards and risks affecting potential alternate routes. In addition, the rule requires railroads to use a minimum of 27 specific risk factors as part of their safety/security risk analysis.

Q: Adding up the amount of nuclear fuel and highly radioactive waste to be shipped out of the facilities that feed, by rail, into the Pittsburgh train corridor, it would see that DOE plans to ship about 7,000 metric tons of the stuff over a 24 year span, perhaps doubling this amount if the program continues into 2067. What is the risk of sabotage, accident or background radiation affecting the citizens of Allegheny County as these shipments roll through?

A: We recommend you speak with DOE, the Department of Homeland Security, the Transportation Security Administration, and the Federal Bureau of Investigations regarding your interest in the risk of sabotage. However, it is worthy to note that the Interim Final Rule on Rail Hazmat Routing includes a provision to guard against the possibility that an unauthorized individual could tamper with rail cars containing hazardous materials to precipitate an incident during transportation, such as detonation or release using an improvised explosive device (IED). Starting July 1, 2008, railroads are now required to include as part of their standard pre-trip inspections of placarded hazardous material rail cars an inspection for signs of tampering with the rail car, including its seals and closures, and an inspection for any item that does not belong, is suspicious, or may be an IED.

FRA believes that the risks to the general public anywhere along a rail route used is extremely low given the high degree of integrity of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) certified packaging used to transport this material, the extremely safe and secure transportation history of shipments of this material by rail over the past 50 years, the high level of ongoing attention and coordination among the parties involved (State/Federal/Railroads) for the preparation and eventual transport of this material in the future using Dedicated Trains, and the commitment of the federal agencies involved to apply stringent and comprehensive safety and security standards to the planned shipments.

Q: Critics have speculated that the costs of cleaning up an accident involving one of these shipments could top $10 billion. What is a more likely price-tag?

A: FRA does not estimate 'clean up' costs and is not in a position to evaluate the accuracy or veracity of the $10 billion figure you cite from thus far unidentified critics. We assume you are speaking with these critics and are asking for their supporting materials and are diligently reviewing all of their assumptions and methodology.

Q: The State of Nevada's nuclear people suggest that an incident involving one of these shipments could create anywhere from 13 to 40,868 latent cancer deaths. What is FRA's perspective on these numbers? What is a more realistic number, in your opinion, of latent cancer deaths in a highly urbanized environment due to a rail or truck incident?

A: This question is directed to DOE, not FRA. However, the March 2005 FRA report entitled Use of Dedicated Trains for High-Level Radioactive Waste and Spent Nuclear Fuel discusses the types of trains that could be used to transport the SNF and the potential risks associated with four different rail accident scenarios.

Q: Some critics believe that a "worst case scenario" for a SNF container would be to submit it to "a long-duration, high-temperature fire that would engulf a cask." Something, perhaps, like the Baltimore Rail Tunnel fire of 2001. What would happen to one of these casks should it endure conditions akin to that described above? Is it possible to test, redesign and manufacture a different sort of cask before it is time to begin shipping the materials to Yucca Mountain?

A: The DOT regulations require the use of Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) certified packages for SNF or other high-level radioactive materials for transportation. We recommend that you contact the NRC Office of Public Affairs for additional information.

Q: Critics have suggested that the best safety measure DOE could take would be to ship the oldest fuel first and to transport only that fuel which has passed its half-life (depending, of course, on the materials being sent). What is FRA's perspective on this?

A: FRA has no role in that deliberation and takes no position on the subject.

Q: The TMI shipments that passed through Pittsburgh until 1990 engendered a great deal of concern, even public protests. What lessons did FRA learn from the shipments from TMI to Idaho? Were they incident free? Did the public outcry change the way you have approached the Yucca Mountain transportation strategy?

A: The FRA first developed and applied its focused inspection policy for the TMI shipments to ensure safe and secure rail transportation of them and that policy, in its updated and expanded form (the SCOP) has been and will continue to be applied by the FRA to rail shipments of SNF and HLRW, including those planned to be transported to Yucca Mountain. The SCOP is a "living document" that the FRA will continue to periodically update and modify as new developments occur and this process includes solicitation of comments and feedback from States, other Federal agencies, rail carriers and rail unions.

Q: The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) has a number of issues with the proposed plans to ship nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain. They include the fact that rail workers won't have a choice of these assignments, leading to concerns that a pregnant woman either in the yard or on a train would be forced to handle this material. BLET believes that there should be a formal certification process in place so that only well-trained trainmen end up hauling or directing the movement of this freight. What is FRA's perspective on this?

A: Under existing provisions of federal rail safety regulations, locomotive engineers are trained and certified to perform the most demanding service their job requires and already operate trains hauling SNF, HLRW, and other types of hazardous materials. If BLET believes some of its members do not meet current federal certification requirements, FRA is interested in having them identified for us so we can take appropriate action.

Furthermore, some of the federal regulations and policies that will govern Yucca Mountain shipments include: safety briefings for train crews to ensure they implement basic ALARA (As Low as Reasonably Achievable) radiation protection principles of time (minimizing), distance (maximizing) and shielding; the use of buffer cars to increase distances between the locomotive or other personnel cars and the rail cars holding the SNF or HLRW packages to render radiation levels in those occupied locations to below normal background radiation; and the use of Dedicated Trains to provide virtual run-through service to greatly minimize stop and dwell times along the selected route.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

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Last Friday...or Saturday I witnessed one of the weirdest 'trains' in our terminal. I was walking over to the maint. bldg. from the RoHo, when a NS Geep, pullin an empty flat, followed by two boxes, another flat, and two or three more boxes, another flat, and a couple more boxes, a flat...then a RED caboose!

With a guy sitting in the cupola. Now get this...none of the boxes wore any marks. Nor did the van. Only the power, a four axle GP was NS.

Strange shit...in my opinion.


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Let me have those trains, I already hauled plenty of nukes. It's to the point, I don't need a lantern at night.

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Maybe they should fax their route to the terrorists. Hell, let everyone know!

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