Thermal Analysis of the Model 9602 Type B Packaging Design for Disused Radiological Sources

A new compact Type B transportation packaging, designated as Model 9602, is being designed by Argonne National Laboratory researchers for storage, transport and disposal of disused radiological sources. This paper describes the thermal analysis of the Model 9602 packaging design that was performed as part of the preparation of a Safety Analysis Report for Packaging (SARP), which is to be submitted to the regulatory authority for an application of a Certificate of Compliance for the packaging design. The thermal performance of Model 9602 under the normal conditions of transport (NCT) and hypothetical accident conditions (HAC), prescribed in Title 10 of the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations (10 CFR 71), “Packaging and Transportation of Radioactive Material,” were evaluated using the Oak Ridge Isotope Generation (ORIGEN) code for the decay heat load of the disused CsCl sealed sources and the finite-element code ANSYS/Mechanical. The results of the thermal analysis indicate that the calculated maximum temperature of all packaging components (e.g., basket, containment vessel, cask) are within their allowable temperature limits under NCT. For HAC, the thermal analysis results showed that the peak temperatures of the packaging components are all well below the allowable temperatures limits of corresponding construction materials. Thus, the thermal analysis demonstrated that the thermal performance of the Model 9602 packaging design provides reasonable assurance that the regulatory requirements of 10 CFR 71 have been met.