Re: Flawed Video Showing "Vulnerabilities" of Casks to Terrorists

["Richard F. Orthen" <rorthen@EARTHSCIENCES.NET>]

In her 3/19 post, Ruth Weiner restated some information from section 6.2.4

the Yucca FEIS and a SNL source document regarding a used nuclear fuel

transportation sabotage event.  While we all can appreciate the perspective

this information provides, I nonetheless have a few comments:



* Consider consequence v. risk.  Since DOE could not (or would not?) assign

a probability to such an event to determine if it met their "reasonable

foreseeable" inclusion criteria, they defaulted to a consequence-only

analysis using RISKIND.  This is in contrast to presentation of other

transportation impacts in the FEIS that also include RADTRAN5 risk results

for a balanced perspective.  Do you believe that the sabotage likelihood is

indeed 1.0 as DOE suggests?  If you don't (as I don't), then the impacts

reported must be interpreted differently, particularly with concerned

stakeholders.



* The MEI consequence is just a bit part in the story.  What DOE's analysis

also predicts is that around 96,000 person-rem could be committed in the

exposed (urbanized) population from a truck transportation sabotage event

(as defined by SNL), equivalent in NEPA-space to 48 latent cancer deaths (9

for rail).  If you want to talk impacts, there they are.  But again, what's

your belief about the event likelihood?  And how does this information

advance selection of the environmentally-preferred transportation routes?



* Ruth goes on to reiterate some of the specifics of the SNL cask challenge

test.  While this information may be public domain, it is not prudent to

make it convenient for saboteurs to get cask vulnerability information from

this BBS or anywhere else.  I can assure you DOE deliberately left this

level of detail out of the Yucca FEIS for this very reason.



Rick Orthen

rorthen@earthsciences.net











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