Development of Honeycomb Impact Limiters

General Atomics (GA), has a contract with DOE's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) to develop two legal weight truck casks to transport spent fuel. The GA-4 and GA-9 Casks transport four pressurized-water-reactor (PWR) and nine boiling-water-reactor (BWR) spent fuel assemblies, respectively. The preliminary designs for the GA-4 and GA-9 Casks include honeycomb impact limiters on the top and bottom of the cask bodies to protect them during any normal transport or hypothetical accident drop onto an unyielding surface. To evaluate the response of the cask during a drop, we need load versus deflection curves for the impact limiters at different impact angles. GA has developed an analytical method which in conjunction with engineering test results will be used to determine the impact limiter load versus deflection curves.