Transport for the Nuclear Industry

ed M S T Price (Ashford: Nuclear Technology) 230 pp, Price 49.00, US $93.50 (hardback) ISBN 1 870965 55 8 This book gives the proceedings of the Fourth International Conference which was held in Bournemouth, UK on 13-15 May 1997, organised by the Institution of Nuclear Engineers, London. It is provided to all subscribers to the International Journal of Radioactive Materials Transport. It consists of 30 papers on an extremely wide variety of topics, ranging from reviews of quality assurance arrangements within specific companies to technical papers containing the mathematical treatment of drop tests. Overall, this is an excellent publication which is of value to both the specialist and the `lay' reader with an interest in the subject. The book is divided into four sections, in line with the four sessions held at the Conference. These were: Operations, Design, Regulations and Safety. The Operations section of the book contains two papers on the sea transport of irradiated nuclear fuel, one from each of BNFL and Transnucleaire, which provided an interesting opportunity for comparison. The Design section, by its nature, has a high technical content, and one paper in particular on the retention of radionuclides in cement is not for the mathematically faint of heart. The third section on Regulations gives a useful insight into what activities are going on in this field in the international arena, including the 1996 IAEA Regulations for the Safe Transport of Radioactive Material. Also of general interest is the paper on the Integrated Management System of BNFL Transport which shows how QA, TQM, HSG65 and ISO 14001 have all been integrated to demonstrate assurance on the management control so vital to safe nuclear material transport. Finally, the fourth section on Safety has a wide range of topics, covering such diverse areas as testing of elastomer seals, radiation instrumentation and transportation of Magnox fuel. Overall, this is an excellent publication containing a diversity of topics, all of which are interesting in their own right, but also valuable in finding them collected together in one place.