lnservice Behaviour of Irradiated Fuel Transport Flasks

The AIEA Regulations for the Safe Transport of Radioactive Material foresee some strong requirements regarding flask maintenance and associated Quality Assurance ; it is especia lly mentioned that the \"packagings must continue to comply with all relevant req uirements and specifications, even after repeated use\". This instruction is rather imprecise and hard because it does not give any indication regarding a possible deviation in comparison with manufacture. Nevertheless, in Service, the notion of Maintenance has been implemented with the following definition : \"All operations carried out on flask in view to recover its manufacture characteristics, or, beyond a certain amount of tolerable wear, to measure the margin with regards to these\".