REPORT ON THE JOINT USA-GERMANY DROP TEST PROGRAM FOR A VITRIFIED HIGH LEVEL WASTE CASK\"'

Designing systems for transporting radioactive material (RAM) has gained increasing importance as the need for transporting and storage of RAM has increased. As a result, significant applied research efforts are under way to develop new generation transportation casks which are more efficient than past designs and maintain the same or higher levels of safety. Many of these efforts focus on qualifying Ductile Iron (Dl) as a suitable material for use as the containment boundary in transportation and storage casks. In Western Europe, the acceptance and licensing of DI has been attained and DI transport casks are in use throughout Europe. The basis of the acceptance rests on numerous proof tests by BAM which have demonstrated the material integrity. Drop tests with DI-prototypes up to 90t were performed according to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) test conditions. The ability to transfer results obtained from the drop tests of prototypes to the serial casks is ensured by combining a number of quality and compliance assurance measures. The transportation community outside of Western Europe has been slower to adopt DI. The principle issue is the establishment of a general adopted fracture mechanics approach. This issue is being investigated extensively in the Federal Republic of Germany, Japan, and the United States of America. This data report is a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) extension of the efforts previously performed in Germany. The U.S. effort has had oversight from France, Germany, Japan, and the U.S. foundry industry. A contract was let by the DOE to General Nuclear Systems, Inc. (GNSI) to design and develop a DI cask to transport RAM; specifically to transport DOE's vitrified high level waste. This program resulted in testing of a full-scale truck cask that became a joint effort between the USA and Germany. A series of full-scale drop tests were performed on a DI transport cask in a cooperative program between the DOE and Bundesanstalt fiir Materialforschung und -priifung (BAM) in Germany. The tests, which were performed at BAM's test facility near Lehre, Germany, were preformed on a prototype cask designed for transport of Vitrified High Level Waste (VHLW) canisters. The VHLW cask is a right circular cylinder with a diameter of 11.56 mm and a height of 3454 em, and which weighs approximately 24,600 kg, including its payload of a single VHLW canister. The drop tests were performed with a non-radioactive, prototype VHL W canister in the cavity.