Experimental Studies on Long-term Thermal Degradation of Enclosed Neutron Shielding Resin

Resins which have high Hydrogen atom content are effective for Neutron shielding and are recently used for neutron shielding material of spent fuel shipping casks. As the resins themselves are easily burned at relatively low temperature, which could be the problem during the fire test condition, mixture of resin and fire retardant which main component is a hydroxide compound is usually used as shielding material. The fire retardant prevents resin from burning by decomposing of the hydroxide compound under fire test condition.