Vienna - Carriers' refusal to transport radioactive cargos is endangering health care and energy supplies all over the world, UN officials said on Wednesday. "Every day we have denial of shipment. And it is getting worse," said Jack Edlow, Chairman of the International Atomic Energy Agency's steering committee on denial of shipments said.
Carriers were refusing to transport medical isotopes, reactor fuel or radioactive sources needed for industrial application despite there not having been any accidents in transport in the past 40 years, Michael Wangler of the IAEA said.
Radiological sources like cobalt are used in radiotherapy machines, especially in developing countries. Every year there are more than 75 million medical treatments involving radio- pharmaceuticals, radio-immunoassays or cancer treatments.
One reason for the increasing number of denials were security concerns and enhanced security. After 9/11 concerns over radioactive materials being used for dirty bombs increased. While it was true that certain material could be used for dirty bombs, the quantities usually shipped for medical purposes were far from sufficient for that purpose.
Individual cases of denial, policy-related denial or economic reasons of denial were recorded.
Officials criticize that radioactive materials were being singled out and discriminated against, often because of a lack of understanding of the risks and safety measures. "For carriers, all radioactive materials are the same. That is as if saying all automobiles are the same," Edlow said.
There were huge differences in risk - also covered by international transport regulations - in transporting fuel for a reactor or several grams of material used for sterilized medical products.
"Denial of shipment is equivalent to shutting down the postal system because of the risk that it can be used for shipping anthrax," Edlow said.
Producers and recipients were running out of options. "We have worked around this problem for years," Edlow said, but it was getting increasingly difficult to find carriers willing to ship that kind of cargo.
It was currently impossible for example to ship urgently needed sources to Turkey, because Italy insisted on notification one year ahead of shipment. Another example was Morocco, Edlow said, that had been waiting for six years to receive a shipment or radiological sources.
Refusal to ship, among others, nuclear fuel for power plants, could also add one restricting factor to the future development of nuclear energy, the IAEA warned.
