<p>Certification of radioactive material (RAM) packages for storage and transportation requires various tiers of testing under hypothetical accident conditions (HAC) to assure safety.&nbsp; One of these key testing aspects focuses on container response to thermal insults when a package includes materials that decompose, combust, or change phase between -40 °C and 800 °C.&nbsp; Thermal insult for RAM packages during testing can be imposed from a direct indoor or outdoor pool fire, or it can also be imposed using a radiant heat system.&nbsp; Depending on variables such as scale, heating rates, desired environment, intended diagnostics, etc., each of the different methods possess their advantages and disadvantages.&nbsp; While a direct fire can be the closest method to represent a plausible insult, incorporating comprehensive diagnostics (e.g., high temperature and pressure measurements, X-ray tomography, etc.) in a pool fire test can pose various challenges due to the nature of a fire.&nbsp; Radiant heat setups can instead be used to impose a comparable heat flux on a test specimen in a controlled manner that is suitable for comprehensive diagnostics.&nbsp; With radiant heat setups, however, it can become challenging to impose desired non-uniform heat fluxes that would account for specimen orientation in a hypothetical accident scenario.&nbsp; This work describes the development, validation, and implementation of a series of techniques used by Sandia National Laboratories to create non-uniform thermal environments using radiant heat sources for RAM packages as large as a 55-gallon drum.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>

Development and Validation of Radiant Heat Systems to Test RAM Packages Under Non-Uniform Thermal Environments

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

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