Overview of the specification and the organization for the transport of radioactive sources from the CEA

Energies and Atomic Energy Commission) occupies a unique position in the French research landscape works, where it is now the major actor in conducting scientific research on lowcarbon energy technologies, in addition to the range of missions that had already been assigned to it in the past. The CEA constantly supports the French nuclear industry through its efforts to optimize existing nuclear reactors and fuel cycles. At the back end, it develops technical solutions for managing radioactive waste. The CEA is responsible for cleaning up and dismantling its own nuclear facilities. Since 2005, the CEA has initiated a strategy for recovery of radioactive sources located in its different sites in France. Part of this programme has focused on the possibility to return the old sources of Plutonium-Beryllium to the US supplier through the “Off-site Source Recovery Project”. This project has provided a solution to the French legal issue for the source recovery strategy. This paper describes the CEA’s experience about the transport of Pu-Be materials used since the sixteen’s as radioactive sources for research programmes. In particular, the definition of the need, the specification of the conditioning aspects, of the packaging choices for the multimodal transport, the licensing process in order to obtain the certifications, the off-site transfers from the CEA’s sites to the LANL’s nuclear facility in USA, are detailed. Finally, this paper will show the significant experience feedback on the topic taken from: the preparation of the sources, the organization of the operations for gathering the radioactive materials in the CEA sites (In-site and Off-Site transfers), the packaging transport, the logistic for the shipments including many interfaces, the contributions to comply with all the regulatory requirements.