Year
2005
Abstract
Radioactive material packages are required to withstand the hypothetical accident conditions given in 10CFR71.73 [1] without releasing their contents. The thermal hypothetical accident condition is defined as an exposure to a 30-minute, fully engulfing fire and is intended to envelop the severity of the vast majority of possible real accidents. While the thermal insult to a package from this environment is well defined, that from real world accidents (actual or postulated) is difficult to quantify. A recent paper by Ammerman et al. [2] investigated a set of actual transportation accidents and compared them to the hypothetical accident conditions that spent fuel casks are designed to survive. The types of accidents that were investigated included a propane tanker truck explosion, a train derailment with subsequent hazardous material fire, and a rail tanker rupture and subsequent butane fire. However, detailed thermal analyses of these accidents were not performed. This paper presents the results of analyses using the CAFE fire code to determine the response of thermally massive spent nuclear fuel transportation packages to some of these historic accidents. Results from the computer simulations are also compared to the hypothetical accident environment described in 10CFR71.73. The results of this work can be used to demonstrate to the public how the regulatory hypothetical accident conditions compare to actual severe accidents that are in the historical record.