Analysis, scale modeling, and full-scale testing of shipping containers for radioactive materials

This paper reviews numerical analysis and scale modeling techniques used to analyze the response of spent-nuclear-fuel shipping containers in severe impact environments. Illustrations of how these techniques have been utilized to analyze two extremely severe hypothetical accident environments are presented. The accident environments include the headon impact of a tractor trailer system and cask into a rigid barrier at 129 km/h (80 mph) and the broadside impact of a cask by a locomotive traveling at 129 km/h (80 mph). The results of the analysis techniques are discussed and compared to results of full-scale tests of the accident scenarios conducted subsequent to the analyses. It is shown that the analyses successfully predicted the response of the full-scale hardware.