International Working Group for Sabotage Concerns of Transport and Storage Casks

Abstract

The International Working Group for Sabotage Concerns of Transport and Storage Casks (IWGSTSC), gathers multiple organisations from different countries (for US party Department of Energy, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and Sandia National Laboratories; for German party Gesellschaft für Anlagen- und Reaktorsicherheit and Fraunhofer Institut; for the French party Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire). The goal of the IWGSTSC is to continue cooperation to improve the analytic capabilities, through information sharing and collaborative research and development plus modelling, to understand the potential adverse public health effects and environmental impacts of radiological sabotage directed at or associated with the transport and storage of civilian nuclear material or other civilian radioactive materials. The Parties may also undertake collaborative research and development in other areas of the physical protection of civilian nuclear materials or other radioactive materials. Since 2000, the IWGSTSC has conducted an extensive test programme for the assessment of the aerosol source term produced in the case of spent fuel transport sabotage by a high energy density device, after having examined several scenarios. The major goal of this programme is to produce an accurate estimate of the so called spent fuel ratio in the domain of respirable, aerosol particles produced. All the reports prepared by Sandia National Laboratories have precisely emphasised the important efforts they have made from the beginning and the amount of work already accomplished. In parallel, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), assisted by technical experts from different countries, has provided a draft document promised to become guidance for the security of radioactive or nuclear materials during transport. The IAEA document contains general guidance addressed to anyone who intends to implement or improve the security of material transports, but the text is, as of today, limited to rather general recommendations. Based on all the knowledge accumulated from past experiments and also based on the work carried out in Vienna at the IAEA, the IWGSTSC members have decided to work on the development of a method for the evaluation of the vulnerability and the source term. So for doing that, joint projects for the research, development, testing and evaluation of the consequences of the malevolent actions during transport are being pursued and are described in this paper.

Keywords:

• MALEVOLENT ACTION
• SECURITY OF RADIOACTIVE AND NUCLEAR MATERIALS