Can a container used for the transport of plutonium by road be severely damaged in the event of an accident, with the possible consequence of a plutonium leak?
Accident scenarios envisaged by the IRSN (Research institute for nuclear safety) for testing the resistance of containers correspond to the severest realistic situations likely to happen. On the other hand, very improbable scenarios, such as a civilian plane crashing onto a container during transport, have not been put to test. Nonetheless, containers undergo very strict trials: – A fall from a height of 50 metres onto a concrete block. This corresponds to a shock at 113 km/hr. – A fall from a height of 19 metres onto the bottom of a ship’s hold. – A fall of one container onto another from a height of 10 metres. – Fire, with a temperature that can exceed 800°C over several hours, representing a fire occurring in a tunnel. In all these situations, FS47 type containers, used for transporting plutonium by road, resist the applied stresses.
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