Comparison of performance of ductile iron and stainless steel HLW shipping casks subjected to an extra-regulatory drop accident.

摘要

This thesis investigates the effects of subjecting stainless steel (SS) and ductile iron (DI) high-level waste (HLW) rail shipping casks to an extra-regulatory accident condition. With the anticipation of the opening of a permanent HLW waste repository in the United States, there is a need for additional shipping casks and new shipping cask designs. One material that has been proposed for construction of such containers is DI, which is currently used for transportation of HLW in Germany. Although DI casks can meet the accident conditions set forth by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), there are concerns that it may be subject to brittle fracture since it is a ferritic material. For this reason, the NRC has preferred designs based on SS with Pb shielding. With this in mind, a drop test was designed that would exceed the accident regulations defined by the NRC and also allow for a comparison of the two cask designs. The resulting extra-regulatory accident condition was a cask on cask drop from nine meters, which were simulated using the finite element code DYNA-3D. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)