§ Mr. Hoyleasked the Secretary of State for Transport what drop tests have been undergone by the containers being used to carry plutonium by air from Carlisle to Wick.
§ Mr. HoramPackages for conveying plutonium in the United Kingdom have to be designed so as to be capable of withstanding severe accidents including those that would be experienced in the event of an air crash. International and national regulations, based upon the 1973 revised edition of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) regulations for the safe transport of radioactive materials (Safety Series No. 6), require that such packages have to meet specified performance standards including tests, and the package design has to be assessed and approved by experts in my Department.
In accordance with these regulations, the formal tests to which a prototype of this plutonium package was subjected included two types of mechanical test—a drop of nine metres in the most damaging attitude on to a hard unyielding target, and a drop of one metre on to the end of a solid steel bar of 15cm diameter.