The safety assessment of packages for the transport of radioactive material follows the IAEA regulations and guidance. The specified regulatory tests shall cover severe accidents and shall demonstrate the package containment system integrity. Special attention must be drawn to the behaviour of the content which could move inside the package due to gaps which are caused in most cases unpreventable by the loading procedure and the structure of the content. A possible internal impact of the content mainly occurring during the drop tests onto the lid system shall be investigated. The IAEA regulations SSR-6 and the Guidance SSG-26, revised recently, consider input from Germany and France related to the significance of internal gaps.&nbsp;In the context of a waste package design assessment a model was equipped with a representative content to conduct a drop test with an internal impact. The weight and impact kinetic of this content covered all possible real contents.&nbsp;The objective of the test was to maximize the load onto the lid system and to prove the mechanical integrity by complying the required leak tightness. The test was conducted conservatively at a package temperature lower than -40 °C at the BAM Test Site Technical Safety.&nbsp;This paper gives an overview concerning internal gaps and their consequences beginning from the BAM efforts to raise the awareness, continuing with the implementation of this topic into IAEA regulations and guidance material and finally describing the conduction of a drop test with the investigation of the internal impact.

Investigation of the Internal Impact During a 9 M Drop Test of an Accident-Safe Waste Package

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/PVP/PVP2021/volume/85314

ASME 2021 Pressure Vessels & Piping Conference (PVP2021)

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