STABILITY OF REGULATIONS VERSUS CONFUSION - Presentation

The stability of Regulations is essential to avoid confusion among their users: the competent authorities and transport operators. Consequently, any changes to the Regulations should be duly justified. Modifications of Regulations are positive if they are really needed. Periodic review/revision cycles are necessary, since they provide opportunities to introduce changes, improving safety as soon as possible or adequately adapting the requirements to reality. Changes in IAEA TS-R-1 imply successive modifications in the UN Recommendations (Orange book), international Regulations such as ADR (including their different language versions) and national Regulations. Finally, the users of the Regulations will have to modify procedures and carry out training to implement the changes. Thus, any major or minor change to TS-R-1 and/or the Orange Book starts a ‘chain process’ of modifications requiring heavy investments in resources until the change is finally implemented; therefore, it is very important, indeed essential, that the cost/benefit balance of any modification be as positive as possible. However, sometimes review cycles are used to introduce modifications that are not clearly justified, where the frequently minor changes involve only movements of paragraphs or simple variations of wording in order to achieve a supposed improvement in the clarity of the text or a theoretical harmonisation among regulations. For example, the 15th edition of the Orange Book introduced many changes specifically affecting radioactive material. As a result, the ADR 2009 edition, which is binding in the European Union, introduced some 120 changes, with around 100 being exclusively changes of paragraphs or structural changes. In short, approximately 85% of the changes were not new requirements or substantial modifications. In addition, many of them involved the review of cross references. In addition to being a source of mistakes in Regulations, this kind of processes entails important disadvantages for the users, with confusion possibly being the main problem, leading to a low degree of trust in the Regulations among the users, insecurity in their application or/and a lack of compliance. In conclusion, the instability of Regulations as a result of frequent unjustified changes may lead to confusion and to a lack of compliance and consequently to a problem of safety in the transport of radioactive material.