Re: transportation statistics

[RuthWeiner@AOL.COM]

Hazmat shipment rates  from Bureau of Transportation Statistics (www.bts.gov) put the number of such shipments at 500,000 PER DAY, or about 182.5 million per year.  There are approximately 5 million shipments of radioactive material is the U. S. every year.  90% of these (4,500,000) are medical and research radionuclide shipments.  About 0.01% (500) are fuel cycle related.  This at present about 3% of the hazmat shipments each year are radioactive material, and about 0.0003% are fuel-cycle related. 


If the spent fuel is shipped to Yucca Mountain by rail, it will approximately double this number: 12,0000 shipments in 24 years = 500/year, and increase the [ercent of hazmat shipments that are radioactive to 0.0006%.  If trucks are used, the number of shipments would increase by about a factor of 5: 53000 shipments in 24 years  = about 2200/year.  Truck shipments would increase RAM shipments until they are about 0.0015% of annual hazmat shipments in the U. S.  RAM is a Class 7 hazardous material accoding to DOT.


Please feel free to email me personally if you want or need more information.  This is what I do for a living, mostly.


Ruth Weiner, Ph. D.

ruthweiner@aol.com