The last several years have marked a precipitous growth in federal, state, and local legislation governing the transportation of dangerous materials, e.g., bulk chemicals, compressed gases, hazardous waste, and radioactive materials. The reasons underlying this trend are fairly discernible. Hazardous waste and its associated health risks have been frequent targets of the media, to the point that few members of the public are unfamiliar with the Love Canal incident or the dangers of toxic waste dumps generally. This has engendered an enduring public clamor for governmental responses. Moreover, as regulatory programs administered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and state agencies under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) begin to take hold, many generators of hazardous waste may find that their custom of simply storing it on site is more burdensome than transferring it to licensed treatment or disposal facilities, resulting in an increase in hazardous waste transportation.

Radioactive materials transportation has clearly been increasing steadily, as more nuclear power plants have come on line and the use of radioisotopes for medical and industrial uses has escalated. It is generally agreed that low-level radioactive materials can be transported by truck with relative safety. Far greater risks are presented by shipments of spent nuclear reactor fuel. Several studies have shown that in the unlikely event that a spent fuel container were sabotaged in a densely populated area, the consequences would be catastrophic. Historically, spent fuel shipments have been necessary only 200 or so times per year because plant owners have had little alternative but to leave it in on-site storage pools. However, as on-site storage capacity has reached critically low levels, shipments have been on the rise, and may reach a level of 9,000 per year within 25 years.¹ To reduce this risk, at least two federal agencies and hundreds of municipalities around the country have promulgated spent fuel transportation bans or restrictions.