Re: "Mass-ive Mobilization" [overweight coal trucks]

[RuthWeiner@AOL.COM]

A point of information:  states have different laws governing what constitutes an "overweight" truck, and what is needed is a permit to operate such a truck in that state.  There are also permits for "heavy haul" vehicles that operate under much stricter speed limits, with escorts,, etc (house trailers are in this category).


Weight limits are set as much to preserve roadbeds as for any other reason.  The tare weight of a legal-weight spent fuel cask (the range of the ten casks I have data for) ranges from 47,600 pounds to 79,200 pounds, and this is just the cask weight.  In some states, therefore, some of these would be "overweight" trucks.


If a passenger car tangles with one of these, the car and its occupants will be the big losers, whether the truck is legal weight or overweight.


On another topic: in comparing releases from a truck accident with the Chernobyl accident, it should also be remembered that:


1.  The "release fraction" at Chernobyl is 1 (100%) for all radionuclides, not 80% to 90% for Kr-85 and 0.0000001% to 0.1% for everything else.

2.  As has been pointed out, the release at Chernobyl was not fuel that had been cooled for 27 years, but fuel from the reactor, that contains a lot more short-lived, and therefore much more radioactive, fission products than what is carried by truck or rail.  There is essentially no I-131 (t 1/2 = 8.3 days) in transported spent fuel, for example.


Ruth Weiner, Ph. D.

ruthweiner@aol.com