Force of the United States Government, must be packed, including limitations of weight, in accordance with the regulations in this part or in containers of equal or greater strength and efficiency as required by their regulations.

(b) Shipments of radioactive materials, made by the Atomic Energy Commission, or under its direction or supervision, which are escorted by personnel specially designated by the Atomic Energy Commission, are exempt from the regulations in Parts 71-78.

While shipments of radioactive materials made under the provisions of paragraph 73.7(b) are legally exempt from all of the regulations in Parts 71-78, no such shipment should be made under conditions which provide less over-all protection to the carrier, to the public, or to the consignee than would be provided by the ICC regulations if the shipment were not exempt. In particular, shipment under escort should not be permitted to cover careless packaging and handling. AEC Bulletin GM-SFP-3 (Serial No. 133), paragraph 4 f., specifies the ICC regulations as the standard of safety in the transportation of radioactive materials, without exception; and section 3 of this Bulletin makes Managers of Operations responsible for the interpretation and application of this and other standards of safety specified therein. Shipment under the provisions of paragraph 73.7 (b) of the ICC regulations are subject to the prior approval of the Operations Manager or of his authorized representative. It is the responsibility of the person approving such shipment to determine whether the safety involved depends to a considerable extent upon the ability of an escort to effect appropriate precautions under hazardous conditions which may arise in transit. If it does, he shall designate as an escort a person whom he considers to be adequately trained, equipped and instructed to meet such conditions as might arise in connection with the shipment he is to escort. This does not preclude designation as an escort, under the provisions of paragraph 73.7 (b), a person who may accompany the shipment for reasons other than safety, e. g., as a security guard or as the driver of a vehicle, provided that in the judgment of the Operations Manager or of his authorized representative such person meets the above condition.

Shipments of radioactive materials by AEC contractors may be made under the provisions of paragraph 73.7 (b) provided they are escorted by personnel specifically approved by the Atomic Energy Commission for the shipments involved. Such approval shall be obtained through normal contractual channels from the Manager of Operations or his authorized representative.

Specific approval by the Bureau of Explosives or by the Interstate Commerce Commission of the shipment of radioactive materials under the provision of 73.7 (b) is not required.

73.8. Canadian shipments:

(a) Explosives and other dangerous articles, as defined in Parts 71–78 which are packed, marked, labeled, and loaded, in conformity with the regulations of the Board of Transport Commissioners for Canada, may be transported from point of entry in the United States to their destination in the United States or through the United States en route to a point in Canada.

(b) Specification containers made and maintained in full compliance with corresponding specifications prescribed by the Board of Transport Commissioners for Canada in its Regulations for the Transportation of Explosives and Other Dangerous Articles by Freight, and Specifications for Shipping Containers, and marked in accordance therewith, CRC etc., may be used for shipment of explosives and other dangerous articles offered for transportation by carriers by rail freight, rail express, highway, or water. Canadian regulations for shipment of radioactive materials by rail are essentially identical with those of the U. S. Interstate Commerce Commission, including arrangement and numbering. (Shipment of explosives and other dangerous articles by motor truck in Canada is not regulated at the time of compilation of this Handbook, 1953. Special permits or other special arrangements are approved by the Board of Transport Commissioners. Requests involving containers for which permits have been issued in the United States by the Bureau of Explosives will be facilitated by including with other pertinent information the Bureau of Explosives permit numbers of the containers to be used. (See discussion on permits in Chapter VI.)

Shipments or radioactive materials in Canada, made by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, or under its direction or supervision, which are escorted by personnel specially designated by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, are exempt from the regulations of the Board of Transport Commissioners.

73.9. Import and export shipments:

(a) Import shipments of explosives and other dangerous articles offered in the United States in original packages for transportation by carriers by rail freight, rail express, motor vehicle, or water must comply with all requirements of the regulations in Parts 71-78. The importer must furnish with the order to the foreign shipper, and also to the forwarding agent at the port of entry, full and complete information as to the packing, marking, labeling, and other requirements, as prescribed in Parts 71-78. The forwarding agent must file with the initial carrier in the United States a properly certified shipping order or other shipping paper as prescribed in this part. Except for the requirements of 77.817 and 77.823, the provisions of Parts 71-78 do not apply to such transportation by

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motor vehicle or water as may be necessary to effect transfer of import shipments from place of discharge to other places within the the same port area or delivery to a water carrier within the same port area (including contiguous harbors). Further transportation of such import shipments by connecting water carrier shall be subject to the regulations prescribed by the Commandant of the Coast Guard.

(6) Shipments of explosives and other dangerous articles offered for transportation by common carrier by water from the United States, its insular possessions, or dependencies, destined to such insular possessions or territory, dependencies, or to a foreign country, must be packed, marked, labeled and described in accordance with the rules and regulations in force at destination ports or as prescribed in Parts 71-78.

73.11. Violations and accidents to be reported:

(a) Consignees must report promptly to the Bureau of Explosives all instances of improper staying and broken, leaking, or defective containers of explosives or other dangerous articles in shipments received by them.

(b) The Bureau of Explosives, upon receipt of reports from consignees, should promptly report to the shipper full particulars covering all such cases.

Subpart A.-Preparation of articles for transportation by carriers by rail freight, rail express, highway, or water

73.27. Rail express limitations:

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(c) When several dangerous articles are placed in one outside package without violating the regulations, the combined quantity of any one group must not exceed the lowest limit prescribed for any one of the articles of that group that is included.

73.29. Empty containers:

(a) Empty cylinders, barrels, kegs, drums, or other containers except carboys (see paragraph (c) of this section) previously used for the shipment of any explosive or other dangerous article, as defined in this part, if authorized for reuse must have all openings including removable heads, filling and vent holes, tightly closed before being offered for transportation. Small quantities of the material with which containers were loaded may remain in "empty" containers and when the vapors remaining therein are unstable, it is permissible to add sufficient inert gas to render the vapors stable.

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(e) All containers and accessories which have been used for shipments of radioactive materials when shipped as empty must be

sufficiently free of radioactive contamination so as to conform to the conditions of paragraph (a) (1), (2), and (3) of 73.392 of this part.

(f) Containers shipped as "empty" must have the old labels prescribed by this part removed, obliterated, destroyed, or completely covered by a square white label as described in 73.413 of this part, measuring not less than six inches on each side, and bearing thereon the word "EMPTY" in letters not less than one-inch high. This does not apply to carload or truckload shipments to be unloaded by consignee.

Since the use of warning labels on used containers shipped as "Empty" is prohibited, it is desirable that in cases in which the consignee may be inconvenienced by unsuspected radioactive content of such containers he should be directly informed of the shipment. Such shipments may also be entered on bills of lading or other shipping papers as "Empty containers which have contained radioactive materials." However, such description does not provide positive assurance that the information will appear on papers reaching the consignee, since in transcribing the description from one set of papers to another the carrier may shorten the description to the minimum required for tariff classification, "Empty Containers."

73.30 Loading and placarding of cars by shippers and unloading of cars by consignees:

(a) When shipments of explosives or other dangerous articles are loaded into cars by shippers, or unloaded from cars by the consignee or his duly authorized agent, the applicable provisions of Part 74 must be complied with. See 74.538 for loading and storage chart.

Subpart D.-Flammable solids and oxidizing materials;

73.226. Thorium metal, powdered:

(a) Thorium metal, powdered, must be packed in specification containers as follows:

1. Spec. 15A or 15B. Wooden boxes with inside metal containers, tightly and securely closed by push-in covers held in place by soldering at least at four points, or in screw-cap type metal cans. Inside containers must not exceed 10 pounds net each. Gross weight of outside packages must not exceed 75 pounds each.

Subpart G.-Poisonous articles; definition and preparation

73.391. Radioactive materials class D Poison, Radioactive materials label; definition:

(a) For the purpose of Parts 71-78 radioactive material is any material or combination of materials that spontaneously emits

ionizing radiation. For the purpose of Parts 71-78, radioactive materials are divided into three groups according to the type of rays emitted at any time during transportation, as follows:

1. Group I.-Radioactive materials that emit gamma rays only or both gamma and electrically charged corpuscular rays.

2. Group II.-Radioactive materials that emit neutrons and either or both the types of radiation characteristic of Group I materials.

3. Group III.—Radioactive materials that emit electrically charged corpuscular rays only; i. e., alpha or beta, etc., or any other that is so shielded that the gamma radiation at the surface of the package does not exceed 10 milliroentgens for 24 hours at any time during transportation.

Since all materials are radioactive to some degree, it must be presumed that the above definition of a radioactive material is intended to apply only to materials having a history which suggests that they have a higher degree of radioactivity than is normal to materials in common usage. For example, materials which may have been subjected to a considerable quantity of activating radiation, materials which may have been contaminated with radioactive materials, or materials from mines containing radioactive ores must be considered to come under this definition unless it is known that their radioactivity is within the range of that of materials not normally considered to be radioactive.

For purposes of ICC regulations, packages of radioactive materials are classified as Group I, Group II, or Group III to facilitate the statement of regulations covering labeling and handling. Packages classed as Group I or Group II require special precautions in transit and in storage to protect personnel and photographic film from radiations emitted from the packages. The stipulation "at any time during transportation" in describing a Group III package is made necessary by the fact that the gamma radiation from some packages will increase during transit due to the formation of gamma-emitting daughter products of the radioisotope being shipped.

(b) Not more than 2,000 millicuries of radium, polonium or other members of the radium family of elements, and not more than 2,700 millicuries (disintegration rate of 100,000 million (1011) atoms per second) of any other radioactive substance may be packed in one outside container for shipment by rail freight, rail express, or hignway, except by special arrangements and under conditions approved by the Bureau of Explosives or except as specifically provided in subparagraph (c) of this section.

NOTE 1.-For purposes of Parts 71-78 of this chapter, one millicurie is that amount of any radioactive material which disintegrates at the rate of 37 million atoms per second.