Abstract
Radioactive Type B and Fissile packages must be shown to survive severe accident condition before they can be approved for use in the public domain. This can be achieved by practical demonstrations or by calculation and reasoned argument. In practice, the impact requirements are generally satisfied by practical tests on full-sized or small-scale prototypes because of the problem of applying complex codes to such problems. Thermal processes are better understood and can be modelled with confidence and, because scale modelling of the effects of a fire is not possible, most large package designs are approved on the results of calculations. This paper describes the limitations of each approach and illustrates the techniques with practical applications. The facilities required for practical tests are described and experience with many tests used to demonstrate their use for transport package design approval.