A SURVEY ON 35 YEARS OF PACKAGING, TRANSPORT AND STORAGE OF RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL

This will is a report from an expert working in this field since 1978, participating in PATRAM conferences since 1980. Exactly in that year 1978 the development and testing of the CASTOR casks started in Germany, with the intention to use these transport casks for interim storage of spent fuel. After involvement in the first full-scale drop tests of those large spent fuel casks for transport package design approval, the official assessment as storage cask started. At the beginning of that new decommissioning technology a series of storage demonstration programs were conducted; most interesting were cases where a cask was loaded in a NPP with fuel assemblies instrumented with thermocouples, equipped with a first lid penetrated by instrumentation cables, closed by a second lid, transported to a research institute and stored there for 2 years, with verification of maximum cladding temperatures and leak-tight closure. In 1982 the basis BAM expert reports for the licensing of CASTOR casks in away-from-reactor storage sites Gorleben and Ahaus were finished. The first cask loading for interim storage was performed in Switzerland in 1983; that CASTOR Ic-Diorit cask, 30 years of age, is the “grandfather” of all dual purpose casks. In 1984, a remarkable transport accident happened, the sinking of the “Mont-Louis” with 30 48-Y-UF6 containers; BAM shortly before had issued the approval for a tank container that could be used for the recovery of some these UF6 containers. The 90s saw the full-scale drop tests with the POLLUX multipurpose cask design ( for transport, interim storage, final disposal), drop test series with new transport packages for fresh fuel assemblies including the “French puncture drop”, finally a spectacular BLEVE blast onto a CASTOR cask. 2004 we were proud to host the PATRAM conference, the second time in Berlin. For the Technical Tours BAM performed drop tests with two full scale SNF casks (the largest ones tested world-wide) at our new 200 t drop test facility. In the meantime a lot of other assessment experience, e.g. in ductile iron brittle fracture, numerical calculations, radwaste disposal container testing etc. was stacked. Changes in safety assessment methodology over the last decades will briefly be addressed.