Stowage and retention of radioactive packages during transport: which rules should be acceptable?

Abstract

Rules, recommendations and standards for stowage of cargos on various means of transport, which are dependent on the mode of transport and are issued by the country in which the transport is taking place, have been used for decades and have been regularly revised to take into account the latest technology, good practices and experience feedback. Most of the radioactive materials transport community, including insurers and the safety authorities, has confidence in these measures to provide the best level of safety when followed. Despite this wide international recognition, these rules, recommendations and standards continue to be considered by some competent authorities in charge of transport of radioactive material as insufficient to comply with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) regulations. The problem arises mainly from the Recommendations for Package Stowage and Retention during Transport, established by the IAEA and published as Appendix IV of TS-G-1·1. These recommendations are mainly based on old references and, as written, lead in several situations to extravagant figures for g forces and/or extravagant situations of combination of these forces. In the present paper, arguments are advanced to convince the international radioactive transport community that the most recent rules, recommendations and standards for stowage of general cargos on the means of transport also provide a high level of safety against ‘routine condition of transport’ for packages containing radioactive material.