System certification for radioactive waste with application to LSA/SCO

It is believed that there will be shipments of radioactive material and waste, as the nuclear industry moves into maturity, which may not be well accommodated within the current transport regulations. Although these shipments could be made under Special Arrangement approvals, the regulatory system would be better served if more formal requirements and criteria were included in the regulations and the shipments were considered in accordance with the regulations. A Special Arrangement approval is now defined as authorising transport of a shipment which does not satisfy all the applicable requirements of the regulations. This paper proposes the Transport System approach to regulating these types of shipments, where operational restrictions or other packaging provisions could compensate for the absence of inadequacy of packaging or other associated requirements. These shipments would require Competent Authority approval, and acceptance criteria would be included in terms of limits on probability, consequences and risk. The process would be limited to those types of shipments where the package system does not work well. The advantages of including Transport System approval within the regulations include reduction in the time required to obtain an approval, greater efficiency of decontamination and decommissioning operations, and assurance of an equivalent level of safety. (Author)