A methodology is described that allows for the direct comparison of many diverse objectives with an end result of a rank-ordered evaluation of options that reflects the decision makers' preferences. This methodology, the multi-attribute utility analysis (MUA), is utilized to establish a ranking of routes and associated modes of transport (e.g., truck, rail, barge) to move used/spent nuclear fuel (UNF/SNF) from independent spent fuel storage installations (ISFSIs) to a Class I carrier. Preliminary evaluations have been performed to identify viable modes of transport from some ISFSIs where the only remaining vestige of the reactor site is the ISFSI and hence, very little transportation infrastructure remains at these “stranded” sites for performing these shipments. The MUA is a structured methodology designed to handle the trade-offs among multiple objectives (i.e., attributes) and provides a transparent, rational, and defensible analysis that is easy to explain and communicate and has been used for decades to provide logically consistent analyses of options (i.e., modes and routes) that are intended to achieve more than one objective, where no single option dominates the others on all of those objectives. The ultimate result from the MUA is a list(s) of the most to the least favored/preferred routes from the ISFSI. This paper provides an overview of the MUA methodology and provides examples of its application to several ISFSIs with shutdown reactors.
