Drum type packages are routinely used to transport radioactive material (RAM) in the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) complex. These packages are designed to meet the federal regulations described in 10 CFR Part 71. The packages are transported in specially designed vehicles like Safe Secure Transport (SST) for safety and security. In the transport vehicles, the packages are placed close to each other to maximize the number of units in the vehicle. Since the RAM contents in the packagings produce decay heat, it is important that they are spaced sufficiently apart to prevent overheating of the containment vessel (CV) seals and the impact limiter to ensure the structural integrity of the package. This paper presents a simple methodology to assess thermal performance of a typical 9975 packaging in a transport configuration.

The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) Specification 6M packaging was in extensive use for more than 40 years for in-commerce shipments of Type B quantities of fissile and radioactive material (RAM) across the USA, among the Department of Energy (DOE) laboratories, and between facilities in the DOE production complex. In January 2004, the DOT Research and Special Programs Administration (RSPA) Agency issued a final rule in the Federal Register to ammend requirements in the Hazardous Materials Regulations (HMR) pertaining to the transportation of radioactive materials. The final rule became effective on October 1, 2004. One of those changes discontinued the use of the DOT specification 6M, along with other DOT specification packagings, on October 1, 2008. A main driver for the change was due to the fact that 6M specification packagings were not supported by a Safety Analysis Report for Packagings (SARP) that was compliant with Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 71 (10 CFR 71). The regulatory rules for the discontinued use have been edited in Title 49 of the CFR Parts 100-185, 2004 edition and thereafter. Prior to October 1, 2008, the use of the 6M within the boundaries of the Savannah River Site …

Global deep-penetration transport problems are difficult to solve using traditional Monte Carlo techniques. In these problems, the scalar flux distribution is desired at all points in the spatial domain (global nature), and the scalar flux typically drops by several orders of magnitude across the problem (deep-penetration nature). As a result, few particle histories may reach certain regions of the domain, producing a relatively large variance in tallies in those regions. Implicit capture (also known as survival biasing or absorption suppression) can be used to increase the efficiency of the Monte Carlo transport algorithm to some degree. A hybrid Monte Carlo-deterministic technique has previously been developed by Cooper and Larsen to reduce variance in global problems by distributing particles more evenly throughout the spatial domain. This hybrid method uses an approximate deterministic estimate of the forward scalar flux distribution to automatically generate weight windows for the Monte Carlo transport simulation, avoiding the necessity for the code user to specify the weight window parameters. In a binary stochastic medium, the material properties at a given spatial location are known only statistically. The most common approach to solving particle transport problems involving binary stochastic media is to use the atomic mix (AM) approximation …

None

None

None