Interface of criticality safety with other transport disciplines

Responsible transportation of fissile material is important to minimise any unwanted impacts on the general public and prevent nuclear proliferation, or misuse of any material. This is especially important when higher enriched fuels are being handled; and pertinent for facilities with lower levels of security compared with for instance weapons establishments. Nuclear Transport Solutions (NTS) has for many decades undertaken all categories of marine transports in the support of critical removal operations (including government stakeholders) around the world. In addition to the external shipping operations, NTS also provides a lot of essential expertise, in particular criticality safety, and capability to support these operations - such expertise which can easily go unnoticed to the external stakeholders and end customers. As part of the safe and effective transportation of fissile material, disciplines such as shielding, design, analysis, licensing and security, to name but a few, are required to interface with criticality safety to ensure a fit for purpose package. This paper will use NTS as an example to demonstrate how the whole lifecycle of package design (or package re-purposing) is approached, including the interface between disciplines and the multiple benefits of these disciplines being in the same organisation. (author)