Impact from road transport of radioactive wastes in Spain

This work focuses in transport of high level radioactive wastes, mainly consisting of spent fuels from
nuclear power utilities in Spain. To date, these wastes are being stored in the own generating facilities,
or they are sent to France; but these options are not any more technically or economically sustainable,
thus a central repository has been planned in the country -its final location just decided in
November 2011- so that we have chosen this site to advance in the studies.
The objectives are to describe the logistics of these transports and estimate their associated radiological
impacts: eight routes are considered, corresponding to the nuclear power installations in
Spain, plus the return of spent fuels which are also temporary stored in France; calculation of impacts
is based in the radiation index of transport, speed and distances, populations exposed, the
corresponding doses and average values of risk.
We have developed a computer application, which needs only to enter the radiation level at 1 m from
the transport and select the route; thus the radiological impacts are automatically obtained, concluding
that they are irrelevant in normal conditions of transports, while the program (web available) can
be useful for further analysis of such operations.