AN ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT FOR SEA TRANSPORT OF SPENT FUEL

High bum-up spent fuel will be transported from each Japanese nuclear power station to the reprocessing facility of Japanese Nuclear Fuel Ltd. in Rokkasho-mura by the purpose built ship. Packagings of high bum-up spent fuels are manufactured strong and confonned to the IAEA Transport Regulations. This purpose built ship is much safer than other ordinary cargo ships because of its specially reinforced structure and navigation systems against collision with other ships, etc. Therefore, it is hardly supposed that high bum-up spent fuels would meet with any accident and that they would submerge into the sea This paper presents a result of environmental impact assessment for a hypothetical submergence accident of high burn-up spent fuel during sea transport In this assessment, calculation methods of nuclide and radiation dose, etc. are almost same as that employed by CRIEPI assessment for ffi.. W (CRIEPI, 1995 and 1996).