Management of Commercially Generated Radioactive Waste - U.S. ...

3.22
rail car or truck trailer, tiedown system, cooling equipment (if needed), and sun shields.
Costs of locomotives and tractors were included in the freight or haulage charges and costs
of the waste containers were included in the predisposal waste treatment costs.
The capital costs were translated into unit cask use charges, using the unit cost cal-
culational procedure, private ownership financial parameters and the cask capacity. A cask
use factor of 80% (292 days per year) and an annual maintenance charge of 2% of the capital
costs were assumed.
Round-trip freight or haulage charges were developed (see DOE/ET-0028, Vol. 4,
Section 6) for both rail and truck transportation. A unit freight charge was developed by
dividing the freight charge per trip by the cask capacity. The total unit transport cost
was obtained by adding the unit cask use charge to the unit freight charge. Additional
detail on transportation cost calculations is given in the previously mentioned reference.
3.2.8.5 Research and Development Costs
Costs for research and development have been included in the overall systems costs for
waste management developed in Chapter 7.
3.2.9 Physical Protection Safeguard Requirements Assessment
The characteristics of spent fuel, the waste materials and the facilities were reviewed
and safeguard requirements were identified for each of the waste management steps considered
in this Statement. Results of this assessment are summarized in Section 4.10 for predis-
posal activities, in Section 5.7 for mined geologic repositories and in Section 6.1 for
other disposal alternatives.
Safeguard requirements for plants and materials in the nuclear industry are specified
in the Code of Federal Regulations (10 CFR 70 and 10 CFR 73). They include physical protec-
tion measures employed to prevent the theft or diversion of special nuclear material, to
prevent the willful release of radioactive material, and to prevent the sabotage of nuclear
facilities. The principal features of these requirements (10 CFR 73) are the protection
forces (guards), physical and procedural access controls, intrusion detection aids, communi-
cations systems, and plans for emergencies and strict accountability (10 CFR 70) of all
items containing nuclear material including fuel elements and containers of waste. Equip-
ment items, systems, devices, or materials whose failure, destruction or release could
directly endanger the public health and safety by exposure to radiation are defined as
"vital" (10 CFR 73). Under the existing Code of Federal Regulations, spent fuel and some
waste materials in the reprocessing cycle would be classified as vital, and the areas in
which they are processed would be vital areas. As such, these areas would require substan-
tial levels of physical protection. For example, Federal regulations specify two indepen-
dent and successive physical controls over personnel and vehicular entry and exit to and
from vital areas.
The required physical protection measures are affected by the potential risk of theft
of material that has special strategic worth or is highly radioactive, or by the conse-