Testing performance criteria for radioactive shipping containers

Considerable confusion exists concerning the use of testing as applied to the design and certification of radioactive material packaging. Many people would insist upon demonstration-testing of such items as shipping casks, in order to develop public confidence. While such demonstrations may be significant in a political sense, more important to the design of safe systems are benchmark tests to evaluate analytical codes and testing to evaluate the adequacy of the regulations. While in some situations demonstration-testing has some limited technical application, it is even then only part of a complete and balanced engineering approach and should not be looked upon as the ultimate solution to the problem of public confidence