PACKAGING AND TRANSBOUNDARY TRANSPORT OF PUO2 AND MOX MATERIAL

The Joint Research Centre (JRC) is a Directorate of the European Commission, distributed over sites in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain. Its mission is to provide customerdriven scientific and technical support for the conception, development, implementation and monitoring of EU policies. Peripheral to its fundamental mission are the Decommissioning and radioactive Waste Management (D&WM) activities associated with the JRC’s nuclear installations constructed and operated on its research sites during the early years of the Centre. Since the 1980s, the JRC’s evolving mission has progressively reduced the need for nuclear installations, that must now be decommissioned. The removal of nuclear material from an installation is a prerequisite to start the decommissioning. This paper reports the successful experience at the JRC Italian site (Ispra) on the conditioning, packaging and transfer of Plutonium (PuO2) and Mixed Oxides (MOX) reference materials used for over twenty years, from the Ispra PERformance LAboratory (PERLA) to the original owner abroad. In particular the design, licensing and construction of new glove box lines and auxiliary tools as well as the revision of safety provisions for material containers handling and transport off-site are described. A significant return of experience has come from the preparation of the material to be loaded in the transport casks, with particular reference to unexpected occurrences in the original packaging and preparedness for recovery procedures in case of major unknown events.