Thursday,
May 18, 2006
By Joe Bauman
Deseret Morning News
"Humongous" slow-moving trucks weighing 225 tons would haul casks of highly radioactive fuel, hogging the narrow Skull Valley road in Tooele County, if the Private Fuel Storage facility is built.
That was the word from Denise Chancellor, assistant Utah attorney general, Wednesday while briefing the Legislature's Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment Interim Committee.
Legislators viewed schematics prepared by the Utah Department of Transportation, showing the size of the trucks, each of which would haul a load of 10 metric tons from a rail unloading facility near I-80 to the PFS plant on the Goshute Indian Reservation in Skull Valley, 26 miles away.
Most of the weight would consist of the heavy protective transportation cask housing spent fuel rods.
Originally, PFS planned to build a spur rail line from the Union Pacific railroad track to its site. But Congress moved to block that by designating the Cedar Mountain Wilderness Area, effectively barring a rail-hauling option. So PFS would have to haul the waste by truck from the railroad to the storage site.
One truck "will take up basically all of the road," she said.
The schematic showed a truck straddling the road's center line to avoid driving at the edge of the pavement.
The route, U-196, is in "sad shape," Chancellor added. Varying from 20 to 22 feet across, often without a shoulder, it is a main thoroughfare to Dugway Proving Ground. It is also an escape route that would be used if an accident happened at the Army's chemical weapons incinerator, located near Stockton, Tooele County.
PFS is licensed to haul casks that weigh 10 metric tons. The trucks would have up to 100 tires, and the vehicles are only a few inches shorter than an overpass they would need to clear.
It's unprecedented for so much of the highly radioactive spent fuel rods, up to 40,000 tons, to be stored in one place, she said.
Should PFS become a reality, nuclear waste will be shipped by rail through Salt Lake City en route to Tooele County, she said. About 697,000 Utahns live within five miles of the route.
The casks would be unloaded and placed on trucks at an intermodal transfer facility to be built about where the frontage road meets I-80.
Trucks would be between 150 and 180 feet long and 12 feet wide, according to the state's official comments on PFS's application to build a route from U-196 to the site. The project is expected to generate rail shipments of up to 4,000 casks of spent nuclear fuel.
"The anticipated interstate cask shipping rate is expected to be 100-200 casks per year, consisting of one to three casks per shipment. The heavy haul shipping rate along Skull Valley Road could be as high as six round trips per week or 312 trips per year.
Chancellor said the proposed Yucca Mountain permanent repository for such fuel can hold 70,000 metric tons of high-level waste, with 3,000 metric tons set aside for military waste and the rest from power companies. Already, the country's waste amounts to 60,000 metric tons with 2,000 metric tons generated annually.
By 2046, she said, 115,000 metric tons will have accumulated, based on existing nuclear reactors. The state would like to see this waste stored at the reactor sites in dry casks like those planned for PFS, until the country comes up with a permanent solution.
The stated purpose of PFS is to serve as a temporary facility to house waste until a permanent site is built. But Rep. Roger E. Barrus, R-Centerville, the committee's co-chairman, said that with so much waste piling up, nobody should be fooled into thinking PFS really would be temporary.
"It's a no-brainer," he said.
Meanwhile, Pam Schuller, the BLM planning coordinator who has been tallying comments on the right-of-way issue, said Tuesday that the count is still progressing. The last time a figure was released after the end of the public comment period on May 8, the number of statements counted was 4,300.
"I'm still getting some in the mail," Schuller told the Deseret Morning News. Some are postmarked before the end of the comment period, some after. She is weeding out those that cannot be considered.
The count is complicated because some people were so anxious to comment that the same person would send an e-mail, fax and letter. As far as the BLM is concerned, "that's one comment, not three." Others might hit the e-mail "send" button six times.
Schuller added, "I'm still pulling duplicates."
PFS site - but no transport? Spent-fuel
trucks may be too big for Skull Valley road
By Joe Bauman
Deseret Morning News
"Humongous" slow-moving trucks weighing 225 tons would haul casks of highly radioactive fuel, hogging the narrow Skull Valley road in Tooele County, if the Private Fuel Storage facility is built.
Deseret Morning News
graphic
That was the word from Denise Chancellor, assistant Utah attorney general, Wednesday while briefing the Legislature's Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment Interim Committee.
Legislators viewed schematics prepared by the Utah Department of Transportation, showing the size of the trucks, each of which would haul a load of 10 metric tons from a rail unloading facility near I-80 to the PFS plant on the Goshute Indian Reservation in Skull Valley, 26 miles away.
Most of the weight would consist of the heavy protective transportation cask housing spent fuel rods.
Originally, PFS planned to build a spur rail line from the Union Pacific railroad track to its site. But Congress moved to block that by designating the Cedar Mountain Wilderness Area, effectively barring a rail-hauling option. So PFS would have to haul the waste by truck from the railroad to the storage site.
One truck "will take up basically all of the road," she said.
The schematic showed a truck straddling the road's center line to avoid driving at the edge of the pavement.
The route, U-196, is in "sad shape," Chancellor added. Varying from 20 to 22 feet across, often without a shoulder, it is a main thoroughfare to Dugway Proving Ground. It is also an escape route that would be used if an accident happened at the Army's chemical weapons incinerator, located near Stockton, Tooele County.
PFS is licensed to haul casks that weigh 10 metric tons. The trucks would have up to 100 tires, and the vehicles are only a few inches shorter than an overpass they would need to clear.
It's unprecedented for so much of the highly radioactive spent fuel rods, up to 40,000 tons, to be stored in one place, she said.
Should PFS become a reality, nuclear waste will be shipped by rail through Salt Lake City en route to Tooele County, she said. About 697,000 Utahns live within five miles of the route.
The casks would be unloaded and placed on trucks at an intermodal transfer facility to be built about where the frontage road meets I-80.
Trucks would be between 150 and 180 feet long and 12 feet wide, according to the state's official comments on PFS's application to build a route from U-196 to the site. The project is expected to generate rail shipments of up to 4,000 casks of spent nuclear fuel.
"The anticipated interstate cask shipping rate is expected to be 100-200 casks per year, consisting of one to three casks per shipment. The heavy haul shipping rate along Skull Valley Road could be as high as six round trips per week or 312 trips per year.
Chancellor said the proposed Yucca Mountain permanent repository for such fuel can hold 70,000 metric tons of high-level waste, with 3,000 metric tons set aside for military waste and the rest from power companies. Already, the country's waste amounts to 60,000 metric tons with 2,000 metric tons generated annually.
By 2046, she said, 115,000 metric tons will have accumulated, based on existing nuclear reactors. The state would like to see this waste stored at the reactor sites in dry casks like those planned for PFS, until the country comes up with a permanent solution.
The stated purpose of PFS is to serve as a temporary facility to house waste until a permanent site is built. But Rep. Roger E. Barrus, R-Centerville, the committee's co-chairman, said that with so much waste piling up, nobody should be fooled into thinking PFS really would be temporary.
"It's a no-brainer," he said.
Meanwhile, Pam Schuller, the BLM planning coordinator who has been tallying comments on the right-of-way issue, said Tuesday that the count is still progressing. The last time a figure was released after the end of the public comment period on May 8, the number of statements counted was 4,300.
"I'm still getting some in the mail," Schuller told the Deseret Morning News. Some are postmarked before the end of the comment period, some after. She is weeding out those that cannot be considered.
The count is complicated because some people were so anxious to comment that the same person would send an e-mail, fax and letter. As far as the BLM is concerned, "that's one comment, not three." Others might hit the e-mail "send" button six times.
Schuller added, "I'm still pulling duplicates."
E-mail: bau@desnews.com