PART I | 1. These Regulations may be cited as the Radiation Protection (Transport of Radioactive Materials) Regulations. |
2. These Regulations shall not apply to —| (a) | establishments in which the radioactive material is produced, used or stored other than in the course of transport, and in respect of which the Radiation Protection (Ionising Radiation) Regulations (Rg 2) apply; | | (b) | persons who have been implanted with radioisotopic cardiac pacemakers or other devices, or who have been treated with radiopharmaceuticals; and | | (c) | the movement of radioactive materials forming an integral part of a vehicle, vessel or aircraft. |
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| 3. Nothing contained in these Regulations shall be so construed as to limit or in any way affect the provisions of the Radiation Protection (Ionising Radiation) Regulations or any written law relating to the transport of dangerous goods or hazardous substances. |
4.—(1) In these Regulations, unless the context otherwise requires —| “A1” means the activity value of special form radioactive material which is listed in Table 1 or derived in Section B of the Second Schedule and is used to determine the activity limits for the requirements of these Regulations; |
| “A2” means the activity value of radioactive material, other than special form radioactive material, which is listed in Table 1 or derived in Section B of the Second Schedule and is used to determine the activity limits for the requirements of these Regulations; |
| “cargo aircraft” means any aircraft, other than a passenger aircraft, which is carrying goods or property; |
| “carrier” means any person who transports radioactive material, whether on his own behalf or on behalf of another person, but shall not include the driver of a vehicle or the master of a vessel or aircraft carrying radioactive material unless no other person is a carrier of that material; |
| “certificate of approval” means a certificate issued by the Chief Executive or any competent authority signifying his approval of the design for special form radioactive material, the transport of a consignment under special arrangement, the package design or the shipment; |
| “competent authority” means any national or international authority designated or otherwise recognised as such for any purpose in connection with the regulation and control of the transport of radioactive materials and includes the Chief Executive; |
| “compliance assurance” means a systematic programme of measures applied by the Chief Executive which is aimed at ensuring that the provisions of these Regulations are complied with; |
| “confinement system” means the assembly of fissile material and packaging components specified by the designer and agreed to by the competent authority of the country of origin as intended to preserve criticality safety; |
| “consignee” means any person who receives a consignment; |
| “consignment” means any package, overpack, freight container or tank of radioactive material presented by a consignor for transport; |
| “consignor” means any person who presents a consignment for transport, and is named as consignor in the transport documents; |
| “containment system” means the assembly of components of the packaging specified by the designer as intended to retain the radioactive material during transport; |
| “contamination” means the presence of a radioactive substance on a surface in quantities in excess of 0.4 Bq/cm2 for beta and gamma emitters and low toxicity alpha emitters or 0.04 Bq/cm2 for all other alpha emitters; |
“conveyance” means —| (a) | in the case of transport by road or rail, any vehicle; | | (b) | in the case of transport by water, any vessel, or any hold, compartment, or defined deck area of a vessel; and | | (c) | in the case of transport by air, any aircraft; |
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| “criticality safety index” or “CSI” when assigned to a package, overpack or freight container containing fissile material, means a number, which is used to provide control over the accumulation of packages, overpacks or freight containers containing fissile material; |
| “defined deck area” means the area of the weather deck of a vessel, or of a vehicle deck of a roll-on/roll-off ship or a ferry, which is allocated for the stowage of radioactive material; |
| “depleted uranium” means uranium containing a lower mass percentage of uranium-235 than natural uranium; |
| “design” means the description of special form radioactive material, low dispersible radioactive material, package or packaging for the purpose of fully identifying the item, which may include specifications, engineering drawings, reports demonstrating compliance with regulatory requirements and other relevant documentation; |
| “enriched uranium” means uranium containing a greater mass percentage of uranium-235 than natural uranium; |
| “exclusive use” means the sole use, by a single consignor, of a conveyance or of a large freight container in respect of which all initial, intermediate, and final loading and unloading is carried out in accordance with the directions of the consignor or consignee; |
| “fissile material” means uranium-233, uranium-235, plutonium-239, plutonium-241, or any combination of these radionuclides but does not include unirradiated natural uranium, depleted uranium, and natural or depleted uranium which has been irradiated in thermal reactors only; |
| “fixed contamination” means contamination other than non- fixed contamination; |
“freight container” means an article of transport equipment designed to facilitate the transport of goods, either packaged or unpackaged, by one or more modes of transport without intermediate reloading, and shall be divided into the following classes:| (a) | small freight containers — containers which have an overall outer dimension of less than 1.5 m or an internal volume of not more than 3.0 m3; and | | (b) | large freight containers — containers other than small freight containers; |
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“intermediate bulk container” or “IBC” means a portable packaging that —| (a) | has a capacity of not more than 3 m3; | | (b) | is designed for mechanical handling; | | (c) | is resistant to the stresses produced in handling and transport, as determined by performance tests; and | | (d) | is designed to conform to the standards in the chapter on Recommendations on Intermediate Bulk Containers (IBC’s) of the United Nations Recommendations on the Transport of Dangerous Goods; |
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| “licensed carrier” means a carrier who has in force a licence issued under the Act authorising him to transport radioactive materials; |
| “low dispersible radioactive material” means either a solid radioactive material or a solid radioactive material in a sealed capsule, that has limited dispersibility and is not in powder form; |
| “low specific activity material” or “LSA material” means radioactive material which by its nature has a limited specific activity or for which limits of estimated average specific activity apply, and shall be divided in accordance with Section A of the First Schedule into 3 groups, namely, LSA-I, LSA-II and LSA-III; |
| “master”, in relation to a vessel, means any person (except a pilot or harbour master) having for the time being control or charge thereof and, in relation to an aircraft, the captain of the aircraft; |
| “maximum normal operating pressure” means the maximum pressure above atmospheric pressure at mean sea level that would develop in the containment system in a period of one year under the conditions of temperature and solar radiation corresponding to environmental conditions of transport in the absence of venting, external cooling by an ancillary system, or operational controls during transport; |
| “multilateral approval”, in relation to a consignment, means approval by the relevant competent authority both of the country of origin of the design or shipment and of each country through or to which the consignment is to be transported and includes any validation or endorsement of the original certificate by a competent authority of any country through or to which the consignment is transported; |
| “natural uranium” means chemically separated uranium containing the naturally occurring distribution of uranium isotopes (approximately 99.28% uranium-238, and 0.72% uranium-235 by mass); |
| “non-fixed contamination” means contamination that can be removed from a surface during normal handling; |
| “overpack” means a receptacle (other than a freight container) which is used by a single consignor to consolidate into one handling unit a consignment of 2 or more packages for convenience of handling, stowage and carriage; |
“package” means the packaging with its radioactive contents as presented for transport and shall be classified into the following classes:| (a) | excepted packages; | | (b) | industrial packages Type 1 (Type IP-1), Type 2 (Type IP-2) and Type 3 (Type IP-3); | | (c) | Type A packages; | | (d) | Type B packages which are further classified into Type B(U) or Type B(M) packages; and | | (e) | Type C packages; |
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| “packaging” means the assembly of components necessary to enclose the radioactive contents completely and may, in particular, consist of one or more receptacles, absorbent materials, spacing structures, radiation shielding, service equipment for filling, emptying, venting and pressure relief, devices for cooling, for absorbing mechanical shocks, for providing handling and tie-down capability and for thermal insulation, and service devices integral to the package, and includes a box, drum or similar receptacle, freight container or tank; |
| “passenger aircraft” means an aircraft that carries any person other than a crew member, a carrier’s employee in an official capacity, an authorised representative of an appropriate national authority, or a person accompanying a consignment; |
| “quality assurance” means a systematic programme of controls and inspections applied by any organisation or body involved in the transport of radioactive material which is aimed at providing adequate confidence that the standard of safety prescribed in these Regulations is achieved in practice; |
| “radiation level” means the corresponding equivalent dose rate; |
| “radioactive contents” means the radioactive material together with any contaminated or activated solids, liquids and gases within the packaging; |
| “revoked Regulations” means the Radiation Protection (Transport of Radioactive Materials) Regulations 1974 (G.N. No. S 248/74) revoked by these Regulations; |
| “shipment” means the specific movement of a consignment from origin to destination; |
| “special arrangement” means those conditions approved by the Chief Executive under which a consignment which does not satisfy all the applicable requirements of these Regulations may be transported; |
| “special form radioactive material” means either an indispersible solid radioactive material or a sealed capsule containing radioactive material; |
“specific activity” means —| (a) | the activity of a radionuclide per unit mass of that nuclide; or | | (b) | where the radionuclide is essentially uniformly distributed in any material, the activity per unit mass of the material; |
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| “surface contaminated object” or “SCO” means a solid object which is not itself radioactive but which has radioactive material distributed on its surfaces and shall be divided in accordance with Section B of the First Schedule into 2 groups namely, SCO-I and SCO-II; |
| “tank” means a tank container, portable tank, a road tank vehicle, a rail tank wagon or a receptacle having a capacity of 450 litres for liquids, powders, granules, slurries or solids which are loaded in gaseous or liquid form or not less than 1,000 litres for gases; |
“tank container” means a tank which —| (a) | is constructed to facilitate the carriage of goods by land or water without need for the removal of its structural equipment; | | (b) | has stabilising members and tie-down attachments external to the shell; and | | (c) | is capable of being lifted when full; |
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| “transport” means to remove from any place, vehicle, vessel or aircraft to another place, vehicle, vessel or aircraft by road, rail, water or air, and includes transport which is incidental to the use of radioactive materials and all operations incidental to transport, such as loading, unloading and storage in transit; |
| “transport index” or “TI” means a single number assigned to a package, overpack, tank or freight container, or to unpackaged LSA-I or SCO-I, which is used to provide control over radiation exposure; |
| “uncompressed gas” means gas at a pressure not exceeding ambient atmospheric pressure at the time the containment system is closed; |
| “unilateral approval” means an approval of a design which is required to be given by the competent authority of the country of origin of the design only; |
| “unirradiated thorium” means thorium containing not more than 10-7 grams of uranium-233 per gram of thorium-232; |
| “unirradiated uranium” means uranium containing not more than 2 x 103 Bq of plutonium per gram of uranium-235, not more than 9 x 106 Bq of fission products per gram of uranium-235 and not more than 5 x 10-3 g of uranium-236 per gram of uranium-235; |
| “vehicle” includes a vehicle whether mechanically propelled or otherwise and also includes a trailer; |
| “vessel” means any seagoing vessel or inland waterway craft used for carrying cargo. |
| (2) For the purposes of determining the estimated average specific activity of any LSA material, any external shielding materials surrounding the LSA material shall be disregarded. |
| (3) References in these Regulations to transport through or to Singapore or any other country shall exclude references to an aircraft carrying any radioactive material flying over Singapore or that country without landing therein. |
| (4) For the purposes of these Regulations, low toxicity alpha emitters means natural uranium, depleted uranium, natural thorium, uranium-235 or uranium-238, thorium-232, thorium-228 and thorium-230 contained in ores or physical concentrates, or alpha emitters with a half-life of less than 10 days. |
(5) For the purposes of these Regulations, A1, A2, the activity concentration for exempt materials and the activity limits for exempt consignments shall be determined —| (a) | in accordance with Table 1 of the Second Schedule; or | | (b) | in the case of individual radionuclides whose identities are known but are not specified in Table 1 of the Second Schedule, in accordance with Table 2 of the Second Schedule or in such other manner as may be approved by the Chief Executive or a competent authority. |
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| (6) The following abbreviations and symbols are used in these Regulations: |
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