Draft Environmental Impact Statement for Roca Honda Mine

Chapter 3. Affected Environment and Environmental Consequences
RHR is proposing to use on-road trucks only for the transport of ore, rail-based transport was not
evaluated.
Because the mill destination(s) have not been finalized, a bounded analysis was performed based
on the location of known and potential milling facilities and economic constraints associated with
shipping costs. The impact assessment determines possible upper bounds of shipping distances of
uranium ore, the amount of material in each shipment, and effects to the environment from these
shipments. The RADTRAN 6 computer code was used extensively (Neuhauser and Kanipe,
2003).
The uranium ore that would be shipped from the mine to the mill(s) is classified as Class 7
Radioactive Low Specific Activity (LSA) LSA-I “hazardous material” under 49 CFR 171.8. It
would be hauled in conventional over-the-road side or belly-dump trucks. They are typically 40feet
long and 8.5-feet wide and hold approximately 20 tons of material. The overall weight of the
ore would be less than 20 tons as it would contain approximately 10–15 percent moisture. The
truck trailers would be DOT placarded as LSA material and covered with a tarp. The assessment
was written for 52 loads per day, or 18,980 loads per year, over the 13-year life of the mine.
The ore contains natural uranium with an average grade of 0.365 percent uranium. Natural
uranium contains 6.7 x 10 -7 curies per gram of uranium. This translates to each truck transporting
0.045 curies of uranium. It is expected that all other radionuclides would when combined make
up less than 0.0001 percent of the total radioactivity of the material and/or have a half-life less
than 2 days (LPES, 2012). The radionuclide data and shipping container characteristics for input
into RADTRAN 6 were obtained from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) “A Resource
Handbook on DOE Transportation Risk Assessment” (DOE, 2002) and the NRC’s NUREG-0170
(USNRC, 1977).
As noted above, the mill destination or destinations have not been finalized; a 450-mile shipping
radius was considered the reasonable upper bound for analysis purposes. These distances are
considered representative of routes that would be used and would provide access to both current
and potential milling facilities. Although the final routes may vary, due to the limited transport
distance and low levels of radioactivity in the ore, a different methodology would not
substantially change the effects.
According the RADTRAN analysis, the nonradiological effects (fatalities from traffic accidents)
would dominate the effects associated with uranium ore transport by truck. It is estimated that
there would be 1.5 accidents per year along the shipping route to the mill(s). Fatalities from
traffic accidents associated with truck traffic were estimated to be 0.16 per year or one every 6
years. These accident and fatality rates are identical to other trucking activities, and lower than
the national averages for the same activities. These effects would be less than significant.
Radiological effects are expressed in terms of latent (eventual) cancer fatalities from incident-free
transport. Incident-free transport represents the transport of the shipments without a release from
the shipment. Radiological latent cancer fatalities from incident-free transport were estimated to
be 0.104 individuals per year or one every 10 years. For perspective, an individual has a lifetime
probability of dying of cancer from all sources of about 246,000 in 1 million, or a risk of lung
cancer of 65,000 in 1 million (CDC, 2011). These effects would be less than significant.
RADTRAN also estimates radiological effects from accidents during uranium ore shipments.
Accident results include the impact (risk per year) from various accident scenarios that potentially
DEIS for Roca Honda Mine, Cibola National Forest 375