Modes, Packages, and Routes FULL-SCALE CASK TESTING From the beginning of the Yucca Mountain program, OCRWM wrestled with the question of whether to conduct full-scale testing of the transportation casks it would use to ship spent fuel and high-level waste to a repository. The 1987 amendments to the NWPA, requiring OCRWM to use only NRC-certified casks, did not reduce calls from stakeholders for OCRWM to conduct full-scale testing. Despite committing to making a policy decision on the subject, OCRWM chose instead to defer to the NRC, which initiated a Package Performance Study in 1999. Being supported by OCRWM, the Package Performance Study has stalled due to the cancellation of the Yucca Mountain project. This issue, therefore, remains unresolved. Throughout the history of the Yucca Mountain program, OCRWM consistently emphasized in its public outreach materials the “robust” nature of the casks that would be used to transport spent fuel and high-level waste to the repository (Janairo and Niles 2008, p. 6). The Yucca Mountain information center in Las Vegas featured a video loop showing the crash tests performed at Sandia National Laboratory in the 1970s, in which casks were subjected to numerous assaults involving trains and trucks. OCRWM’s purpose in showing these films was clear: the image of a shipping cask emerging nearly unscathed after crashing into a concrete wall is a powerful visual display of the seemingly indestructible nature of the cask. The demonstration is all the more powerful when the video reveals the extreme damage experienced by the truck and train involved in the crash tests (DOE 1978). As a program, OCRWM understood the contribution full-scale cask demonstration tests could make in terms of building public confidence in the transportation system. Despite this understanding, the programwas unable to bring itself to commit to full-scale testing of the shipping casks it would use to transport waste to the repository. In 2008, near the end of the program, OCRWMwas working on a fact sheet entitled“Transportation Casks: Protecting the public by securing the contents.”The fact sheet describes the design of the casks —noting that “casks can weigh up to 125 tons with walls up to 15 inches thick” (DOE 2008i, p. 1). The section “Certified and tested” alludes to the fact that full-scale testing is not a requirement for NRC certification: “To receive certification from NRC, manufacturers must demonstrate, through computer analyses and/ or physical testing, that a cask design can survive severe accident conditions without releasing its contents” (ibid., p. 2). This language, however — especially preceded by a subheading“Certified and tested,” and followed by a list of four “tests” that are required as part of the certification process — could easily lead a lay reader to think
that casks would, indeed, undergo physical “testing” (ibid., pp. 2-3). “Cask design and testing”was one of OCRWM’s original nine institutional issues in OCRWM’s Transportation Institutional Plan . The “design” aspect addressed the benefits of OCRWM developing new shipping casks that would have higher capacities than existing casks, thereby reducing the number of shipments. OCRWM did succeed in developing new designs for high-capacity truck casks and multipurpose canisters (MPCs) in the 1990s, with the idea of MPCs being resurrected in 2005 with OCRWM’s interest in TAD canisters (Kouts 2007, p. 2). Partly because of the work OCRWM sponsored, private vendors now have the capability to meet the program’s demand for shipping casks to move spent fuel and high-level waste. This aspect of the issue is, therefore, closed. Testing, however, remains an open issue. In the Transportation Institutional Plan , OCRWM reported that “interested parties”had suggested the program develop“testing programs [ranging] from those that would test casks using both analytic techniques and model testing as necessary to meet NRC requirements, to programs that would result in the destructive testing of full-scale casks under conditions that result in cask failure” (DOE 1986c, p. A-75). To respond to this feedback from stakeholders, OCRWM was at the time developing“a cask-testing plan” that would “establish…OCRWM’s testing policy and the role of participants (including the OCRWM and other DOE program offices, oversight organizations, testing organizations, the utilities, carriers, and public representatives)” (ibid., p. A-75). Although OCRWM’s plans for testing at the time were limited to“engineering tests of cask materials and component parts” and“design verification of ¼ scale models for rail casks, ½ scale models for truck casks,” the Transportation Institutional Plan did indicate OCRWM’s intention to“address the potential use of confirmatory, demonstration testing under conditions that exceed Federal test requirements” (ibid., pp. A-75 and A-77). Among the many stakeholder groups that have called for OCRWM to use only casks that had undergone full-scale testing are regional cooperative agreement groups, the state of Nevada, and the NAS. The Midwestern High-Level RadioactiveWaste Committee passed a resolution in 1993 that expressed the committee’s support for “the development and implementation of a federal program to conduct full-scale testing of the design and integrity of spent-fuel shipping cask prototypes that includes sequential tests (drop, fire, puncture, and immersion), reflects the input of major stakeholders, and serves as an integral component of the process for certifying spent-fuel shipping casks” (MHLRWC 1993, p. 2). Two years later, at its annual conference in 1995, the Midwestern Legislative Conference passed a similar resolution urging OCRWM to conduct full-scale testing and resolving that the program should be developed“in consultation with major program stakeholders” such as the Midwestern committee (MLC 1995, p. 2). The Midwestern Legislative Conference reiterated this position in 2003 (MLC 2003). WGA maintains a resolution that calls for DOE to“commit to conducting full-scale testing of casks to be used to transport SNF/ HLW” (WGA 2008b, p. 3). TheWIEB“Report Card”on the OCRWM transportation program gave OCRWM the grade of “F” for failing to meet theWestern governors’ request (WIEB, p. 3). In 2006,
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