AN OVERVIEW OF THE 20 YEARS ROMANIAN EXPERIENCE ON PACKAGING AND COMPONENTS TESTING ACCORDING TO THE NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL REGULATION

More than twenty years ago, the Institute for Nuclear Research Pitesti (INR), through its Reliability and Testing Laboratory, was licensed by the Romanian Nuclear Regulatory BodyCNCAN to carry out qualification tests [1] for packages intended for the transport and storage of radioactive materials. Radioactive materials, generated by Romanian nuclear facilities [2], are packaged in accordance with national [3] and the IAEA’s Regulations [1, 6] for a safe transport to the disposal center. Subjecting these packages to the normal and simulating test conditions accomplish the evaluation and certification in order to prove the package technical performance. This paper describes the qualification tests for Type A and B packages used for transport and storage of radioactive materials during the past 20 years of experience. Testing is used to substantiate assumptions in analytical models and to demonstrate package structural response. The Romanian test facilities [1, 3, 6] are used to simulate the required qualification tests and have been developed at INR Pitesti, the main supplier of Type A packages used for transport and storage of low radioactive wastes in Romania. The testing programme will continue to be a strong option to support future package development, to perform a broad range of verification and certification tests on radioactive material packages or component sections, such as packages used for transport of radioactive sources to be used for industrial or medical purposes [2, 8]. The paper describes and contains illustrations showing some of the various tests which have been performed and how they relate to normal conditions and minor mishaps during transport. Quality assurance and quality control measures taken in order to meet technical specification provided by the design are also presented and.