report of the T. I. C. transport committee October 2004

摘要

In 1 996 the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) published document TS-R-1. it was revised in 2000 and the current version is TS-R-1 (ST-1, Revised). TS-R-1 contains the regulations for the transport of naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM), minerals which contain radionuclides. TS-R-1 gave an upper limit of 7 Bq/g for classification of materials as non-hazardous, with a 10 x exemption for NORM materials which would be processed for their content of metals other than uranium or thorium (thus the limit was 70 Bq/g). The regulation was not clear in the interpretation as to whether this meant the radiation from uranium and thorium only or also meant the radiation from the two parent elements and their progeny in the decay chain. The most common interpretation was for the parent elements only and, therefore, there were no problems with the transport of tantalum raw materials. The revised regulation was clearer. It changed the limit to 1 Bq/g (again with the 10 x exemption for NORM) and was specific that it did not include the progeny. The activity of the progeny of uranium and thorium, in equilibrium, is about seven times that of the uranium and thorium parents. The IAEA writes and proposes regulations, but its regulations only become effective when they are accepted and adopted by each individual country. The acceptance and adoption can be different in each country. The agency within each country that is responsible for the coordination of the acceptance and adoption is the Competent Authority. Individual countries may adopt the regulations or modify them to suit their own needs. Some are very strict and some are much less strict. The Competent Authority is the organization which communicates with the IAEA and its own country's government and with the organizations, companies and people affected by the regulations that govern the transport of radioactive materia . For example, in the U.S. it is the Department of Transportation, in the U.K. it is the Department for Transport, and in Australia there are thirteen Competent Authorities, including ARPANSA. Because implementation of the regulations is carried out by the Competent Authority in each country, the regulations are not all implemented worldwide at the same time. Thus, as more and more countries adopted the new regulations they began to include nearly all the material carried between countries. T.I.C. members began to see increasing problems with the transport of raw materials over the past one to two years.