Packaging for the Transport and Storage of Spent Sealed Sources in Brazil

Abstract

Since mid-1994, the Centro de Desenvolvimento da Tecnologia Nuclear has been assigned the task of receiving and safely conditioning spent sealed sources until a federal disposal site is available. At the moment (October 1995) there are approximately 1300 sources in the CDTN interim storage hall. As part of the measures taken to accomplish this task, the transport group has developed a simple and low cost packaging, which consists of an outer 200 litre drum surrounding a cylindrical lead shielding, the intermediate space being filled with concrete. In the primary concept a concrete internal lid allowed the sources to be retrieved for future re-encapsulation. In view of a failure in the drop test, a modification was introduced to gather additional information about the ultimate packaging strength, although the resulting concept does not allow future recovery of the contents. The next improvement to be introduced will be the use of a shell-type shock absorber to protect the packaging closing system.