IAEA Regulatory Initiatives for the Air Transport of Large Quantities of Radioactive Materials*

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been laboring since 1988 over a far reaching change to its model regulations (IAEA, 1990) for the transport of radioactive materials (RAM). This change could impact the manner in which certain classes of radioactive materials are shipped by air and change some of the basic tenets of radioactive material transport regulations around the world. The impetus for this effort was spawned in part by the decision of the Japanese government to move large quantities of reprocessed plutonium by air from France to Japan. The exploration of options for overflights of United States and Canadian airspace (among others) and landings in Anchorage, Alaska, generated intense debate in the USA and countries that might have been overflown. The debate centered on general questions of the need to air transport plutonium in large quantities, package survival in an accident, prenotification. emergency response, routing, safeguards and other facets of the proposed operations. In the USA, which already had the most stringent regulations for packaging of plutonium shipped by air (NUREG-0360), there was immediate additional legislative action to increase the stringency by requiring demonstration that an aircraft carrying plutonium in certified packagings could undergo a severe crash without release of plutonium (the Murkowsk.i amendment). In the United Kingdom there was an official inquiry that resulted in a high visibility report (ACI'RAM, 88) and a conclusion that the IAEA should examine regulatory needs in the general area of air transport. The Japanese program to return plutonium was a triggering event leading to the current IAEA initiative, but, in fact, there had been discussion at many earlier meetings of IAEA's Standing Advisory Group for Safe Transport of Radioactive Materials (SAGSTRAM) concerning the need for specific package qualification standards for the air mode. These discussions stemmed both from unilateral action in the US in the mid-seventies driven by a Congressional requirement and from the realization that the air mode does have the potential to impose more severe accident environments than the truck, rail and water modes for which the IAEA package performance requirements are demonstrably adequate. The main arguments to retain the existing regulatory structure were: I. the fact that, on a risk per trip basis, air transport was about equivalent to surface modes; 2. there were relatively few shipments of large quantities of RAM by air, and 3. there was a desire to maintain a relatively simple regulatory structure that was independent transport mode.