Explosive- and Fire-Resistant Steel Concrete Cask for Packaging and Transportation of Radioactive and Hazardous Materials

Today design of the Steel Concrete RBMK Casks are alternative to using the Ductile Cast Iron - CASTOR RBMK Casks for the transportation and storage of the fuel elements. The Ductile Cast Iron and Steel Concrete Cask were developed by Gesellschaft fur Niiklear-Behalter mbH. The Steel Concrete RBMK Cask has the advantage of being easier to fabricate in countries without high standard heavy industries, eventually at the power station itself, and have a more favorable price. Scheme of the Steel Concrete RBMK Cask is shown in the Figure # I. In this cask the high density concrete( ~3.5 g/cm 3) is placed between 40 mm thick metal shells. Concrete is the shielding for the nuclear radiation. The accidental external heating of a cask and the internal heat capacity will cause the vapour explosion of the contents of a cask in the hypothetical conditions. Using the porous concrete(refractory materials - damper) will decrease the heating of the contents from an external source at an interval time and mitigate the blast transmission from an internal explosion to the walls of cask. This work is an experimental test of the Steel Damper Cask to the internal explosive events.