Consignor's part and multimodality of the packages of RAM

One of the essential principles of Safety in transport of RAM as it was carried on, until the present days, is that the safety comes firstly from the packaging, and not from a special consideration of the mode of transport or anything else. A natural consequence was that the packaging remains the same, whatever is the used mode of transport, another that the transport mode does not take part, otherly than by its normal safety in the carriage itself in the protection against the radioactive hazard. Some recent actions, nevertheless, could be considered as putting some doubt on the implementation of this principles in the regulations and sometimes on these principles themselves. However, these latter come from the fact that the safety of the transport lays essentially in the hands of the consignor. He is indeed the only one who knows well enough the material and who is able to assess the adequation of the packaging and to warrant it to the Competent Authority when necessary. Besides, the packaging is the only direct grasp he has on the shipment, outside the special case of exclusive use. This situation is not completely incompatible with a new possible graduation of the packaging according to the transport mode, under the condition that this graduation be unidimensional which means the same in every field of testing. The consignor must, then, select the packaging corresponding to the most demanding of the possible modes. It is certainly much more difficult to adapt the mode of transport to the shipped materials themselves. All the transport has then to be in the hands of the consignor. That perhaps, can be relevant to industrial nuclear transport (eg: irradiated fuels, wastes), but not to the carriage of radioactive materials in general, which is the scope of IAEA regulations. (author)