Early accident simulating testing of radioactive material packages in road vehicles

Abstract

Beginning as early as the 1960s, concerns were voiced as to the adequacy of the package test standards imposed by the transport regulations promulgated by the International Atomic Energy Agency. One concern that was frequently raised and has continued to the present time is that the test standards do not necessarily simulate real accidents. The purpose of the crash tests described here that were done with typical packages carried in full scale vehicles was to assess the IAEA standards, their adequacy and to suggest changes to them that might be needed. It was also hoped that the tests, which were performed in the USA and in the UK, would show to regulators, to users of the regulations and to the public that current regulations already provide a very high level of safety for real world accidents. With time, much of the original information regarding these tests and their results has been lost. The few documents that remain have been surveyed and this paper presents summaries from this survey of the tests and their results.