DWPF [Defense Waste Processing Facility] canister impact testing and analyses for the Transportation Technology Center

A legal weight truck cask design has been developed for the US Department of Energy by GA Technologies, Inc. The cask will be used to transport defense high-level waste canisters produced by the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) at the Savannah River Plant. The development of the cask required the collection of impact data for the DWPF canisters. The Materials Characterization Center (MCC) performed this work under the guidance of the Transportation Technology Center (TTC) at Sandia National Laboratories. Two full-scale DWPF canisters filled with nonradioactive borosilicate glass were impacted under ''normal'' and ''hypothetical'' accident conditions. Two canisters, supplied by the DWPF, were tested. Each canister was vertically dropped on the bottom end from a height of either 0.3 m or 9.1 m (for normal or hypothetical accident conditions, respectively). The structural integrity of each canister was then examined using helium leak and dye penetrant testing. The canisters' diameters and heights, which had been previously measured, were then remeasured to determine how the canister dimensions had changed. Following structural integrity testing, the canisters were flaw leak tested. For transportation flaw leak testing, four holes were fabricated into the shell of canister A-27 (0.3 m drop height). The canister was then transported a total distance of 2069 miles. During transport, the waste form material that fell from each flaw was collected to determine the amount of size distribution of each flaw release. 2 refs., 8 figs., 12 tabs