Understanding Loads on Spent Nuclear Fuel Rods During Transportation and Storage

foreign [Music] we're at the 90-foot drop tower at Sandia National Laboratories where we conduct package Certification testing for radioactive material Transportation packages the packages have two requirements for impact testing one is a one foot drop onto a rigid Target and the other is a 30 foot drop onto a rigid Target because this Tower is 90 feet tall and we have ample capability to do both of those tests the target here is a massive concrete block covered with four inches of steel armor plate and that is unyielding for packages weighing up to about five thousand pounds he conducted two very important 30 centimeter drop tests here they simulate conditions of accidents that may occur during transport of spent nuclear fuel in the first test we dropped a dual assembly the purpose of this test was to find the condition which correctly mimic the behavior of cask and impact limiters in our second test we dropped surrogate assembly suragata assembly is much closer representation of actual spent fuel assembly this test demonstrated that perfume assembly will maintain its Integrity when dropped 30 centimeters in a handling accident during this test a pressure paper was used to measure the contact pressure between the rods in the circuit fuel assembly during the 30 centimeter drop this is a pressure sensitive film in which a higher color exposure intensity corresponds to a higher pressure value a Matlab script was developed to extract RGB values from scans of the pressure paper and correspond those two pressure values using a chart designed for use with the pressure paper [Music] for Sandia to be at the Forefront of testing you know we're going to be called upon to test packages and analyze them we need to maintain that capability it's extremely important we take that data and we use that to calibrate our models and we create a simulation that mimics the test and then once we have that we can drop that from in the simulation we can drop that from a foot two feet 30 feet and we can get an idea of the damage that would occur in a much more high impact scenario this is all about safety how safe are these packages but at the same time what if an accident did occur we provide estimates for the decision makers for policy makers so we can answer a lot of things in simulation that we do not have maybe the time for to do in the test field or we don't have the scope for simulation can give you a lot of Clues good estimates nothing's perfect but can give you a really good estimate on we need to change the design to accommodate variable temperature loads nuclear power plants have provided the nation with a secure and carbon-free source of energy however the spent nuclear fuel needs to be stored and transported in a safe manner the department of energy uses the research we do here at Sandia to make technically sound decisions around the storage and transportation of spent nuclear fuel [Music]

Channel: Sandia National Labs

Views: 3,257

Keywords: Sandia National Laboratories

Id: p0Im_jxCUqY

Length: 3min 26sec (206 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 05 2023