Drop and fire testing of spent fuel and HLW transport casks at ‘BAM Test Site Technical Safety’

Abstract

BAM, as a competent German government institute for the mechanical and thermal testing of radioactive material transport and storage containers, operates unique drop and fire test facilities for experimental investigations on the open air BAM Test Site Technical Safety. To be able to perform even drop tests with full scale spent fuel or HAW casks (i.e. the German CASTOR cask designs), BAM constructed in 2004 a large drop test facility capable to handle 200 ton test objects, and to drop them onto a steel plate covered unyielding target with a mass of nearly 2600 ton. Drop test campaigns of the 181 ton GNS CONSTOR V/TC, the 129 ton MHI MSF-69BG and a 1∶2 scale model of the GNS CASTOR HAW28M (CASTOR HAW/TB2) have been performed since then. The experimental BAM drop testing activities can be supported also by drop testing of smaller packages (up to 2 ton) in an in-house test facility and by dynamic, guided impact testing of package components and material specimen inside a new drop test machine. In May 2008, a new modern fire test facility was put into operation. The facility provides two test stands fired with liquid propane. Testing in every case has to be completed by computational investigations, where BAM operates appropriate finite element modelling on appropriate computer codes, e.g. ABAQUS, LS-DYNA, ANSYS and other analytical tools.

Keywords:

• Package testing
• Drop testing
• Fire testing
• Regulations