44 Years of Testing Radioactive Materials Packages at ORNL

This paper briefly reviews the package testing at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) since 1960 and then examines the trends in the testing activities that occurred during the same period. Radioactive material shipments have been made from ORNL since the 1940s. The first fully operating reactor built at the ORNL site was patterned after the graphite pile constructed by Enrico Fermi under Stagg Field in Chicago. After serving as a test bed for future reactors, it became useful as a producer of radioactive isotopes. The Isotopes Division was established at ORNL to furnish radioactive materials used in the medical community. Often these shipments have been transported by aircraft worldwide due to the short half-lives of many of the materials. This paper touches briefly on the lighter and smaller radioisotope packages that were being shipped from ORNL in large numbers and then deals with the testing of packages designed to handle large radioactive sources, such as spent fuel, and other fissile materials.