DEMONSTRATION OF THE IMPACT PERFORMANCE OF THE GRAVINER FLASK

The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) was formed in 1954 when the British Government set up a new body to oversee the nation's nuclear research programme. UKAEA's role was to provide Britain's atomic weapons deterrent and develop reactor technologies for the nuclear power stations of the future. Today, UKAEA is an internationally respected expert in nuclear clean-up, offering complete solutions in a wide range of services including programme management, decommissioning, waste management, environmental services and technical consulting. The Graviner flask is a vertical loading flask for the transport of inventories in sealed cans between buildings on the UKAEA Harwell site. It has been in service in various forms for a number of decades. Performance in hypothetical drop accident conditions form part of its performance requirements. A recent evaluation has shown that its performance has a number of shortfalls which would lead to loss of its safety function in such accident conditions. One of the problems, however, was with the conservatism in the hand calculation method which was employed in the evaluation. This paper presents the work carried out to demonstrate the performance of the flask using the finite element method. This paper will present the details of the modelling and discuss the real behaviour of the flask.