The Institutional Component of a Technical Decision: Uniform Permits for Overweight Truck Shipment of Spent Nuclear Fuel in the United States

Overweight trucks are being considered for shipments of spent nuclear fuel from reactors to an MRS or repository by the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM). The use of overweight trucks will be determined by OCRWM's upcoming decisions on whether to proceed with the development of an overweight truck cask and the choice of modal options. Overweight trucks (over 80,000 pounds gross vehicle weight) are being considered because they could significantly reduce the number of shipments required compared to \"legal weight\" trucks. A report from Battelle's Office of Transportation Systems & Planning, Truck Shipments to Nuclear Waste Repositories: Legal, Political, Administrative, and Operational Considerations (BMI/OTSP-1), confirmed the potential reduction in total number of shipments along with other operational and institutional advantages. Recent analyses have indicated that a legal weight cask could transport 3 PWR or 7 BWR spent nuclear fuel assemblies and that an overweight truck could transport 5 PWR or 12 BWR assemblies, resulting in a 40% reduction in the required number of shipments.