Initial Engineering Evaluations of the New In-glovebox Container Designs

LA-UR-18-31787Containers have always played a pivotal role in nuclear materials management at LosAlamos National Laboratory (LANL) and across the Department of Energy (DOE)complex. The Material Storage team at LANL has designed, tested and qualified severalcontainers designs through the most rigorous requirements for the safety of the workerand public. Newer container designs such as the SAVY-4000 container has beenimplemented for work outside the glovebox line. Due to more restraints and requirementsfor worker safety there is a need to design a new container with new requirements for in-glovebox use. Currently, the SAVY-4000 and other container types are being used insidethe glovebox line but were never designed for this particular application which puts astrain on worker ergonomics and worker safety. The new Requirements Documentation(RD) has outlined the primary performance objectives for an in-glovebox container.Criticality water resistance requirements is the main driver for worker safety and isdefined as a container surviving a drop or fall from a minimum height of 12ft with amaximum payload, followed by a leak test by immersing the container in water at aminimum of 6 wc, for a duration of two hours while not allowing more than 50 mL ofwater ingress, in addition the container has to cumulatively survive a glovebox firefollowed by another leak test. Some of the new proposed container designs presentedhere have three different closing mechanisms including a simple latch design, coarsethreaded design and K-Flange design. Testing included four containers of each typethrough the rigorous criticality water resistance acceptance criteria. Results show onecontainer from the simple latch design and K-Flange survived all tests showing promiseas a suitable design. The coarse threaded container survived the post drop water ingresstesting but has yet to go through the glovebox fire testing. All container types arecurrently being investigated to increase integrity through postulated accident scenariossuch as material selection for gasket material, different latch types, increased threadengagement and filter compression for leak tightness.LA-UR-18-31787