Safeguards Sample Shipping: Design and Development of the Lightweight Air-transportable Accident Resistant Container (LAARC)

Safeguards samples from plutonium processes in IAEAsafeguarded facilities under the Non-Proliferation Treaty are typically transported to the safeguards analytical laboratory by air, for reasons of timeliness and security. Legislative and regulatory events in the United States, in recent years, have resulted in very stringent crashworthiness requirements being placed on packages for the air transport of plutonium. The presently-available PAT-1 package has just undergone certain regulatory and jurisdictional clarifications to enable current support of safeguards sample shipments. The LAARC, lightweight air-transportable accident resistant container, is now in development to better meet specific U.S. and IAEA needs for the air shipment of plutonium samples under very stringent accidentmodelling conditions.