IAEA Co-Chair’s Report: Open-Ended Meeting of Legal and Technical Experts on the Draft Code of Conduct on the Facilitation of the Safe and Secure Transport of Radioactive Material

An Open-Ended Meeting of Legal and Technical Experts on the Draft Code of Conduct on the Facilitation of the Safe and Secure Transport of Radioactive Material was held from 15-18 July, 2024 at Vienna, Austria.

The purpose of this meeting was to discuss the Code of Conduct that has been drafted at the IAEA Denial of Shipment Working Group, and to determine next steps.

Taking from the report, the following conclusions and recommendations were reached.

Conclusions

For some Member States, a CoC was considered to be an effective instrument to address the DoS issue. Notwithstanding this and recognising that consensus to proceed further with development of a CoC could not be reached at this meeting, Member States participants concluded that other facilitation mechanisms can and should be pursued, Such mechanisms include:

1. Development of a Joint Statement by the interested Member States as an alternative to a CoC (which could be circulated as an INFCIRC document upon request to the Secretariat);
2. Continued work of the DoS Working Group;
3. Full implementation of the ongoing initiative to establish NFPs and support for their functions.

Recommendations:

member States participants formulated the following recommendations:

1. Interested Member States should continue consultations on DoS;
2. All Member States are encouraged to nominate NFPs and to support the DoS WG;
3. The Secretariat should share the report with the DoS WG;
4. The Secretariat should circulate the report to all IAEA Member States.

The next full meeting of the IAEA Denial of Shipment Working Group is provisionally scheduled for 2025 Q1.