Nuclear flask
[citation needed] BNFL has maintained a fleet of transport casks to ship SNF for the United Kingdom, continental Europe, and Japan for reprocessing.
In the UK a series of public demonstrations were conducted[3] in which spent fuel flasks (loaded with steel bars) were subjected to simulated accident conditions.
Introduced in the early 1960s, Magnox flasks consists of four layers; an internal skip containing the waste; guides and protectors surrounding the skip; all contained within the 370-millimetre-thick (15 in) steel main body of flask itself, with characteristic cooling fins; and (since the early 1990s) a transport cabin of panels which provide an external housing.
Flasks for waste from the later advanced gas cooled reactor power stations are similar, but have thinner steel main walls at 90-millimetre-thick (3.5 in) thickness, to allow room for extensive internal lead shielding.
The heat test is claimed to be considerably below that of theoretical worst-case fires in a tunnel,[citation needed] and the worst case impact today would have a closing speed of around 170 miles per hour (270 km/h).
[citation needed] Problems have been found where flasks "sweat", when small amounts of radioactive material absorbed into paint migrate to the surface, causing contamination risks.
Similar flasks in mainland Europe were found to marginally exceed the contamination limits during testing, and additional monitoring procedures were put into place.
[9] In the United States, the acceptability of the design of each cask is judged against Title 10, Part 71, of the Code of Federal Regulations (other nations' shipping casks, possibly excluding Russia's, are designed and tested to similar standards (International Atomic Energy Agency "Regulations for the Safe Transport of Radioactive Material" No.
On July 18, 2001, a freight train carrying hazardous (non-nuclear) materials derailed and caught fire while passing through the Howard Street railroad tunnel in downtown Baltimore, Maryland, United States.
[15] The State of Nevada, USA, released a report entitled, "Implications of the Baltimore Rail Tunnel Fire for Full-Scale Testing of Shipping Casks" on February 25, 2003.
The commission's regulations prohibit the disclosure of location, routing and timing of shipments of nuclear materials, such as spent fuel.
This article incorporates public domain material from Spent Fuel Transportation Package Response to the Baltimore Tunnel Fire Scenario (NUREG/CR-6886).
