Radioactive Material Package-Testing Capabilities at Sandia National Laboratories*

Evaluation and certification of radioactive and hazardous material transport packages can be accomplished by subjecting these packages to normal transport and hypothetical accident test conditions as defined in Title 10, Code of Federal Regulations, Part 71 (10 CFR 71) (NRC 1994). The regulations allow package designers to certify packages using analysis, testing, or a combination of analysis and testing. Testing can be used to substantiate assumptions used in analytical models and to demonstrate package structural and thermal response. Regulatory test conditions include impact, puncture, crush, penetration, water spray, immersion, and thermal environments. Testing facilities are used to simulate the required test conditions and provide measurement response data. Over the past four decades, comprehensive testing facilities have been developed at Sandia National Laboratories to perform a broad range of verification and certification tests on hazardous and radioactive material packages or component sections. Sandia's facilities provide an experience base that has been established during the development and certification of many package designs. These unique facilities, along with innovative instrumentation data collection capabilities and techniques, simulate a broad range of testing environments (Hohnstreiter et al. 1992). In certain package designs, package testing can be an economical alternative to complex analysis to resolve regulatory questions or concerns.