Current safety basis documents for transuranic (TRU) waste facilities provide safety guidelines to contain and minimize release of radioactive material to the public and to facility employees.  The recommendations from these safety basis documents are based on prior experimental work.  For a scenario where a pool fire engulfs a U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) 7A drum filled with TRU waste, Department of Energy Standard DOE-STD-5506-2007 assumes drum lid ejection causes 1/3 of the drum contents to eject and undergo an unconfined burn.  The remaining 2/3 of the drum contents are assumed to stay inside the drum and undergo a confined burn.  The corresponding airborne release fractions (ARFs) for confined and unconfined burns are respectively defined as 5E-4 and 1E-2.  However, tests performed in 2017 at Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) indicate that conditions could potentially vary from those currently assumed if 7A drums filled with typical waste are equipped with a UT-9424S filter to prevent lid ejection during a pool fire.  SNL has thus developed a series of tests to help quantify ARF for DOT 7A drums under the aforementioned conditions using CeO~2~ as a surrogate contaminant.  In this multi-phase test series, SNL has performed the following:  (1) a TGA analyses on various combustible materials to identify a conservative load for 7A drums in a pool fire, (2) a 30-minute pool fire test to measure key parameters in order to replicate the fire environment using a radiant heat setup, (3) a preliminary radiant heat test to demonstrate capability as verified by key parameters measured in the pool fire test, and (4) preliminary diagnostics to identify a proper technique that can adequately quantify ARF for 7A drums during thermal insult. This manuscript thus discusses the techniques, approach, and unique capabilities SNL has developed to determine an ARF value for DOT 7A drums exposed to a 30-minute fully engulfing pool fire while equipped with a UT-9424S filter on the drum lid.


Determining Airborne Release Fraction From DOT 7A Drums Exposed to a Thermal Insult

Division / Sponsors: 
Power Division & Nuclear Engineering Division (NED)

Power Conference
Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/POWER/POWER2020/volume/83747

International Conference on Nuclear Engineering
Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/ICONE/ICONE2020/volume/83761

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