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Does the transportation of LLW put the community at risk of radiation exposure? 

No.  When transporting LLW, the risks to the community of exposure to dangerous levels of radiation are negligible. 

It is important to realise that LLW is far less radioactive than many other radioactive materials that are currently regularly transported on Australian roads, such as radiopharmaceuticals and radioisotopes used in industry.  Radioactive materials are used for a wide variety of beneficial purposes in Australia and around the world.  Over several decades of transport of tens of millions of radioactive material packages each year around the world, there has never been an in-transit accident with serious human health, economic or environmental consequences attrributable to the radioactive nature of the goods. 

Licensed radioactive sources within NSW are used in medicine, industry, agriculture, the environment and elsewhere.  Many of those sources - particularly those used in industrial radiography (e.g. checking the integrity of oil pipelines or aircraft engines) - are mobile, being moved around the state as required.  An individual industrial radiography source is typically much more active than an entire truckload of low-level waste.  The use and transport of such sources in NSW by persons other than Commonwealth agencies is regulated by the NSW Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC).  The DEC has estimated that there are currently 540 mobile radiation gauges using radioactive sources presently in use in New South Wales. 

It should also be realised that radioactive materials are only one form of the hazardous materials which are transported on NSW roads every day.  For example, the transport of petroleum products or fertiliser presents much greater hazards to the community than would the transport of low-level waste. 

Any waste to be transported by road would be solid and emit extremely low levels of radiation.  It would be sealed in steel drums and transported in containers that are designed to remain intact in an accident.  Standing two metres away from such a truck of LLW for an hour would give you less radiation than if you took a return flight from Sydney to Los Angeles.