HOW THE UK COMPENTENT AUTHORITY HAS DEVELOPED A RISK BASED STRATEGY FOR CARRYING OUT NON-NUCLEAR SMALL USER INSPECTIONS

The IAEA carried out a Transport Safety Appraisal Service Mission (TranSas) in June 2002 on the implementation of the Transport Regulations in all relevant transport activities in the UK. One of the recommendations stated that “It is recommended that the Department for Transport (DfT) should evaluate the adequacy of its audit and inspection programme and that the necessary resources should be provided for audits and inspections. Specifically, minor consignors and consignors of mobile sources should be more fully integrated into this programme. Priorities should continue to be risk based to maximize the effectiveness of the limited resources”. Since 2002, the DfT (the UK Competent Authority UK-CA) has developed and evolved a ‘risk based’ strategy to carry out non-nuclear small user inspections as part of its overall responsibility to ensure compliance with Great Britain (GB) legislation1 . These include but are not limited to: industrial radiographers, hospitals, road construction services and couriers. There are over 2500 organizations in GB registered as holders of radioactive material. The current inspections are based on the requirements of the Carriage of Dangerous Goods and Use of Transportable Pressure Equipment Regulations 2009 1 . The majority of the requirements of these regulations are referenced from the European ADR 2009 Agreement 2 , which, in turn, is based on the requirements of the IAEA TS-R-1 3 with regard to the transport of radioactive material. This paper presents a summary on how the system has evolved from 2002 to the present day and plans for the future:- • Greater emphasis has been placed on questionnaire sets to assess risk, and how these have evolved with time and experience, • Risk based inspections, • Enforcement strategy, • Better communication with other Agencies and enforcement bodies who have a role in either licensing premises for holding radioactive material or working with radioactive material, • Inspector training, • Additional security requirements, • How information technology can help, • Identifying industry shortfalls and implementing industry awareness training.