Radioactive materials packaging standards and regulations: Making sense of it all

Numerous regulations and standards, both national and international, apply to the packaging and transportation of radioactive material. These are legal and technical prerequisites to practically every action that a designer or user of a radioactive material transportation package will perform. The identity and applicability of these requirements and the bodies that formulate them are also not readily understood. This paper addresses the roles that various international bodies play in developing and implementing the various regulations and standards. It uses the U.S. regulatory and standards-making bodies to illustrate how international requirements feed the domestic control of packaging and transport. It explains the scope and interactions between domestic and international regulatory and standards agencies and summarizes the status and major standards activities at the international level.