Accident Risk Assessment of Transport of Spent Fuel by Rail in India

AbstractThe results are presented of a study carried out to estimate the accident risk involved in the transport of spent fuel from a typical Indian nuclear power plant site near Kota to a typical fuel reprocessing plant site at Tarapur. The fuel considered is the low burnup Indian pressurised heavy water reactor fuel with a minimum cooling period of 485 days. The spent fuel is transported in a cuboidal, naturally cooled shipping cask over a distance of 822 km by rail. The accident risk analysis is carried out using the fault tree methodology. RADTRAN 4 computer code is used for estimating the consequences and the accident risk. Results of the analysis indicate that the accident risk values are acceptably low and do not constitute significant additional risk to the population along the route.