§ Mr. Llew SmithTo ask the Secretary of State for Transport what policy proposals Her Majesty's Government have put to the recent conference held in Vienna to decide on the standards to be adopted for casks used to transport by air consignments of plutonium in mixed oxide form and what response was made by the British delegation to the United States proposals. [39253]
§ Mr. NorrisThe Advisory Committee on the Safe Transport of Radioactive Materials—ACTRAM—concluded that the air transport of certain physical forms of mixed plutonium—uranium oxide constitutes no significant inhalation hazard. At the meeting in Vienna in September the United Kingdom delegation therefore supported the proposal that such material could continue to be transported by air in packages currently approved to International Atomic Energy Agency standards, provided that the material itself meets stringent test requirements which minimise the potential inhalation hazard.
The UK, in common with a large majority of other member state delegations, could not accept the United States proposals.