HARMONISATION AT EU LEVEL: A WAY TO INCREASE CONFIDENCE IN THE SAFE TRANSPORT OF RADIOACTIVE MATERIALS

It is a great pleasure for me to speak at this conference, which certainly represents one of the key events in the area of the transport of radioactive materials. But everybody in this room will agree as well that not only is this conference a key event, but its topic, the transport of nuclear materials, is a key to the future of nuclear energy. In the European Union, about one third of the electricity is produced by nuclear power stations. This involves numerous transports of materials to and from the various installations of the nuclear fuel cycle. But also and in particular outside the nuclear industry there is a high number of transports of radioactive materials in the medical, industrial or research area. As we live in a global market, many of these are trans-border operations.