Good practice for uranium concentrate transport

Abstract

There has been discussion within industry for a number of years regarding standards for shipping uranium mill concentrates to conversion facilities. Uranium concentrates are transported internationally by road, rail and sea from the uranium producers to uranium converters. The concentrates are LSA-1 type material transported in IP1 packaging, typically standard open head steel drums. In some cases, the transport takes place over relatively limited distances in dry vans (road trailers); however, in many cases, the transport is over long international routes that involve the use of dry 20' sea (ISO) containers. International routes involve sea transport and often include both rail and road segments. This combination of long distances and multiple transport modes can result in more demanding conditions of transport. An initiative was launched within World Nuclear Transport Institute (WNTI) with the setting up of an industry task force to discuss and explore the three main aspects of uranium concentrates shipping in ISO containers: the drums used for packaging, the containers themselves and restraint of the drums in the containers. In this regard, WNTI published an information paper called 'Uranium concentrates industry good practices for ISO containers in multimodal transport'.

Keywords:

• Uranium