PACKAGING AND TRANSPORTATION OCCURRENCE REPORTING

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Order231. 1 calls for the maintenance of a database for all unclassified occurrence reports (ORs). ORSprovide DOE with notice of incidents and accidents that endanger the public, workers, or DOE facility operations. To fulfill this policy, the DOE Occurrence Reporting and Processing System (ORPS) was established to require DOE facilities to report and process information concerning such events. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) provides DOE with data and analysis of occurrences related to packaging and transportation (P&T) safety. This program produces annual reports, “lessons learned” bulletins, and information for the packaging and transportation home page on the Internet. The analysis and reports provided can be used as a tool for oversight and a means for DOE sites to be proactive and anticipate problems through shared knowledge and lessons learned. To illustrate, some observable trends based on 3 years of the program are given. In summary, this program shows potential problem areas that need correcting, and possible breakdowns of safety.