Re: SNF Transportation

[NeilKeeney@AOL.COM]

In a message dated 1/10/02 12:56:11 AM Central Standard Time, 

RuthWeiner@AOL.COM forwards a communication originating with Kurt Gottfried:



<<  I have now had a chance to look at all the email messages between you 

 > and David Lochbaum. The basic point is that UCS has never looked into 

 > the spent fuel transportation issue, only into storage, and has not 

 > taken any position on the former. For that reason, in responding to 

 > Mr. Cohen, Mr. Lochbaum only dealt with his questions regarding 

 > storage. By the same token, he could not respond to your request for 

 > UCS opinions on various transportation issues.

 > 

 > Mr. Lochbaum and I regret that your insistence led him to respond to 

 > you in an undiplomatic manner. >>



Professor Gottfried:



Assigning another cause over the deportment portrayed by one's own 

communication or response would also seem to be a condition worthy of regret 

or at least a little sheepishness...



Back to the topic at hand...  While I have not seen or read any of the 

communications twixt you and yours, I have, unlike many at UCS apparently, 

some direct experience with the transport of SNF.  For example, I was one of 

the RP Specialists associated with the Monticello spent fuel shipments during 

1986 to the BASF facility in Morris IL that went off without a hitch (pun 

intended).  I also did a fair amount of training for the general public 

concerning the structural integrity, emergency response contingencies, and so 

forth.  The data is available to any who wish to develop a position 

concerning shipment; though I consider that one would be hard-pressed to 

challenge the physical mechanisms and safeguards while not being regarded as 

a "Chicken-Little."



The greatest hazard (one of those emergency contingencies) we encountered 

along the shipping route was when a "concerned citizen" suspended himself 

from a railroad overpass and, using a geiger-counter, apparently made an 

attempt to measure (well, at least get a reading) the shipment and nearly 

hung himself with a suspension harness...  Had he gotten aboard the train, he 

would have been confronted with what were possibly the largest shotguns I had 

seen in my entire career as a human being.  Those Brinks Security guys had 

some weapons, must have been 50 caliber...



Best Regards,



G. Neil Keeney

RRPT

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