Transportation of used nuclear fuel

Far more detail about the plans for, even the feasibility of, shipping six million bundles of spent nuclear fuel clear across Ontario is needed.

The Transportaion Association of Canada states that: "Used fuel has been safely transported in Canada since the 1960s and is still transported in small amounts today (up to 5 shipments per year)." The NWMO trumpets the safety record of nuclear shipments here and worldwide.

But what is being proposed here is several orders of magnitude larger; in fact, it will dwarf all previous nuclear shipments combined, in terms of kilometres and kilograms.

"Up to five shipments of used nuclear fuel are transported per year"... on closed roads at low speeds. What happens to the spent nuclear fuel as it shakes, rattles, and rolls over 1,500 kilometres of public road at highway speeds? Spent fuel is fragile; damaging it results in far greater emissions of radioactive particles. What kind of shape will it be in when it finally reaches its destination? How safe will it be to open these transport casks? How often  will the casts be able to be re-used before the internal levels of radioactive exposure make them useless?

This neds to be part of the assessment, right now. I suggest it may not be feasible to move this material over such a distance. The safety risk isn't so much in accidents, but in the protential transport damage to the used fuel itself. It could make these bundles too radioactively hot to handle with any efficiency at the receiving end.

Are you really going to wait until a billion or two is spent developing a DGR before you know what impact tranmsport will have on the used fuel?