WHAT SHOULD RAM (RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL) TRANSPORTATION ECONOMICS BE GOVERNED BY?

There is no simple and/or single approach to RAM transportation economics. The diversity of situations, depending on the materials transported, their quantities, the transportation modes needed and the countries concerned, makes it difficult to define a model of how economics of RAM transportation work. However, some specificities can be noticed that apply to most of them: - Frequently, if not always, transportation is economically only a part of a deal involving one or another activity of the nuclear fuel cycle from mining uranium to reprocessing used fuel and/or disposing of final waste. The value added by transportation generally represents a small part of the added value at each step. - The buyer of a RAM transport generally includes it in the product or service he is trading and may be only interested in the most rapid, cheapest and safest way to transport. - On the supplier side, rapid, cheap and safe are conflicting factors and the balance of these aspects usually may result in a sophisticated optimization applied to equipment and operations. Of course, national and international regulations and standards play a key role in determining the optimum which is then an economic optimum with regulation constraints. These constraints are more stringent in the back-end of the fuel cycle and heavily influence the dedicated “transport system” to be developed. In the front end, a more open and competitive market is observed. Both cases are analyzed, pointing out the necessity and the global benefit of always minimizing the risks of transportation related to industrial operation and general public and media concern. This paper comments the new approach of optimizing transport security developed within the AREVA group (and described in another paper) as a new global optimum, including economics.