Chemical Compatibility Screening Results of Plastic Packaging Components to Mixed Waste Simulants\"

The purpose of hazardous and radioactive materials packaging is to enable these materials to be transported without posing a threat to the health or property of the general public. To achieve this aim, regulations in the United States have been written establishing general design requirements for such packagings. While no regulations have been written specifically for mixed waste packaging, regulations for the constituents of mixed wastes, i.e., hazardous and radioactive substances, have been codified by the U.S. Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT, 49 CFR 173) and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC, 10 CFR 71). The design requirements for both hazardous [49 CFR 173.24 (e)(l)] and radioactive [49 CFR 173.412 (g)] materials packaging specify packaging compatibility, i.e., that the materials of the packaging and any contents be chemically compatible with each other. Furthermore, Type A [49 CFR 173.412 (g)] and Type B (10 CFR 71.43) packaging design requirements stipulate that there be no significant chemical, galvanic, or other reaction between the materials and contents of the package. Based on these national requirements, a Chemical Compatibility Testing Program was developed in the Transportation Systems Department at Sandia National Laboratories (SNL). The program attempts to assure any regulatory body that the issue of packaging material compatibility for hazardous and radioactive materials has been addressed. This program has been described in considerable detail in an internal SNL document, Chemical Compatibility Test Plan & Procedure Report (Nigrey 1993) and in a companion paper (Nigrey 1995) of this conference. In this paper, we present the results of the first phase of this testing program. This phase involved the screening of five candidate liner and six seal materials to four simulant mixed wastes, respectively. The testing protocol involved exposing the respective materials to - 2,900 gray ( -3 kGy) of gamma radiation followed by 14-day exposures to the waste types at 60\"C. The seal materials were tested using Vapor Transport Rate (VTR) measurements while materials suitable for liner applications were tested using specific gravity measurements. For these tests, a screening criteria of -1 glm2fhr for VTR and a specific gravity change of 10% was used as a metric (Nigrey 1995). Those materials which failed to meet these criteria were judged to have failed the screening tests and were excluded from the next phase of this experimental program.