Opening Address

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen! It is a great pleasure and rare proud for me to declare the lOth International Symposium on Packaging Transportation of Radioactive Materials, PATRAM '92, open in Japan. I am also privileged to have the opportunity to welcome each of the participants and attendees, many of whom came long distances to attend and contribute to the symposium and join in this opening ceremony. As you know well, the first Symposium was held at Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1965, under the sponsorship of Atomtc Energy Committee United States of America. At that time the submitted papers were not so many and the themes were limited in the small area of radioactive material problem. Since then, the symposiums have been held every three years, for a total of nine times in the United States, Germany and Switzerland. During twenty seven years, more and more papers have been presented and the number of participating nations have increased steadily and also the fields which have been discussed in the symposium have expanded to include wide and various problems concerning transportation of yellow cake, uranium-hexafluoride, uranium-oxide, plutonium-oxide, new fuel assemblies, spent fuels, low level wastes, high level wastes and various kind of radioactive isotopes, etc. These symposiums have promoted to join forces and collaborate internationally. It is as plain as daylight that the nine times symposiums which have already taken place have formed a very important forum for exchange of informations among countries. The obtained valuable results and effective experiences have been vital, not only in amending the International Regulations for the Safe Transportation of Radioactive Materials as issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), but also in improving technology and engineerings in the fields of transport systems, package and packaging design for radioactive materials. In addition, these results seem to supply strong supports for the public acceptance about the transportation of radioactive materials, which is nowadays aimed as a big target of the campaigns against nuclear power. I believe, it is meaningful obviously that the commemorative tenth PATRAM symposium will achieve great success and play an important role to establish wide and deep understanding of the public.