Transportation Risk Assessment - An Early Look at the Canadian Program

This assessment examines hypothetical accidents along potential transport routes and estimates the dose consequences to individuals present at incidents involving the transportation of used nuclear fuel using the Used Fuel Transportation Package (UFTP). Road transportation has been determined to be the bounding transport mode for calculating dose to transportation workers and incident responders. This is due to the fact that transportation workers in the road transport realm are, on average, in closer proximity to the UFTP for longer periods of time than during rail transport. Hypothetical accidents are examined and dose estimates to transportation workers and incident responders are determined. Dose rates at various distances from the package were calculated in previous work. With this data, and scenario specific exposure distance, time and frequency data, potential doses to transportation workers and incident responders are discussed for discrete scenarios. The estimated doses are compared to the regulatory dose limits defined in the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission’s Radiation Protection Regulations. All doses to transportation workers and incident responders are calculated to be below the regulatory dose limit of 1 mSv per year for a member of the public, therefore no individuals need to be designated as Nuclear Energy Workers (NEWs). Keywords: Transportation, used nuclear fuel, radiological dose, dose assessment, CANDU.