Appraisal for Brazil of the safety of the transport of radioactive material. Provision for the application of the IAEA safety standards

Within the family of the United Nations, the IAEA has the specific statutory function of establishing standards of safety for the protection of health against exposure to ionizing radiation. As a result, in 1959 the United Nations Economic and Social Council requested that the IAEA be entrusted with the drafting of recommendations on the transport of radioactive substances.Within its statutory mandate and pursuant to this request, in 1961 the IAEA issued the Regulations for the Safe Transport of Radioactive Material (the Transport Regulations).The Transport Regulations have been periodically reviewed and, as appropriate, amended or revised. Moreover, several guides and technical documents supporting the Transport Regulations have been issued by the IAEA. The latest version of the Transport Regulations was issued in 2000 by the IAEA as publication TS-R-1 (ST-1, Revised). On 25 September 1998 the IAEA General Conference adopted resolution GC(42)/RES/13 on the Safety of Transport of Radioactive Materials. In adopting that resolution the General Conference recognized that - compliance with regulations which take account of the Agency's Transport Regulations is providing a high level of safety during the transport of radioactive materials. The IAEA's Statute also authorizes it to provide for the application of its standards at the request of any State.The IAEA discharges this statutory function through a number of mechanisms, including rendering independent peer review appraisal services to determine the status of compliance with its standards. Consistent with this statutory function, resolution GC(42)/RES/13 requested the IAEA Secretariat to provide for the application of the Transport Regulations by, inter alia, providing a service for carrying out, at the request of any State, an appraisal of the implementation of the Transport Regulations by that State. In response to this request, on 10 December 1998 the IAEA offered to render such an appraisal service to all States. The service was termed the Transport Safety Appraisal Service (TranSAS). Since then the IAEA General Conference, through resolutions GC(43)/RES/11, GC(44)/RES/17, GC(45)/RES/10 and GC(46)/RES/9, has commended the Secretariat for establishing TranSAS, commended those Member States that have requested an appraisal, and encouraged other Member States to avail themselves of the appraisal service. On 10 May 2000 the Head of the International Relations Office of the Brazilian National Nuclear Energy Commission (CNEN) requested assistance from the IAEA within the framework of the Transport Safety Appraisal Service. To lay the groundwork for the appraisal, a preparatory mission was undertaken in August 2000. At that time a preliminary agreement was developed addressing the scope of the appraisal as well as the tasks and activities to be undertaken prior to and during the appraisal. Because of the difficulty in obtaining funding for the appraisal, the actual appraisal, initially planned for November 2000, was postponed until April 2002. The TranSAS appraisal for Brazil involved five independent experts from the IAEA and Member States of the IAEA and was conducted between 15 and 26 April 2002. This report presents its findings