EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES OF FREE-STANDING SPENT FUEL STORAGE CASK SUBJECTED TO STRONG EARTHQUAKE

Concrete cask spent fuel storage system is considered to essentially have an economical advantage and becoming widely used. For vertically free-standing concrete cask on the floor pad in the cask storage facility, its tip-over and sliding behavior and the integrity of the spent fuel during strong seismic motions are still the technical key issues to guarantee its safe performance. In this paper, the experimental studies are reported by performing the seismic excitation test with a full-scale model concrete cask including 21 PWR simulated fuel assemblies, using 3D fullscale earthquake testing facility, operated by the National Research Institute for Earth science and Disaster prevention. As a result, it is found that the tip-over of the full-scale cask did not occur and, the maximum response deformation of the fuel remains under the elastic region by the interaction effect due to the existence of the gap between the canister and cask body, and the gap between the fuel and basket.