Extending intervals for periodic leakage rate testing of radioactive material transportation packagings

This paper describes methodologies that may be used to extend the intervals applied to the periodic leakage rate testing of certified type B transportation packagings that are loaded but not immediately shipped. In some cases, the packagings may be held in interim storage for more than 1 year, and the immediate goal is to extend the leakage rate testing interval from 1 up to as many as 5 years. The extended intervals are predicated on the basis of acceptable results of long term O ring performance tests and continuous monitoring of environmental conditions of the packagings provided by the ARG-US radio frequency identification (RFID) system. Preliminary results obtained from field testing and applications of the ARG-US RFID system to date indicated that the system is reliable and that the packaging ambient temperature can be monitored and recorded by the RFID tag sensors even when the packagings were away and outside the range of the RFID reader. Extending the intervals between the periodic leakage rate testing of the packagings enhances safety by reducing handling and radiation exposure to workers and cuts annual operating costs during the storage phase of such packagings by US$2500–3000 per package.