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3D Printing Possibilities: Additive Manufacturing Impact Limiters for Transportation Casks
With the significant advances in additive manufacturing (AM), otherwise known as 3D printing, Orano Federal Services and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte recently re-examined the capabilities to print impact limiters for transportation casks used to ship spent nuclear fuel. Impact limiters protect transportation casks (sometimes also referred to as transportation overpacks) and their contents during an accident. Impact limiter designs must withstand testing based on a certain significance level of hypothetical accidents, including drops, crushing, fires, and immersion in water.
Walter E. Clark
Nuclear Technology | Volume 36 | Number 2 | December 1977 | Pages 215-221
Technical Paper | International Safeguard / Chemical Processing | doi.org/10.13182/NT77-A31928
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Radioactive iodine wastes can be isolated in very concentrated form as insoluble barium io-date in concrete. Specimens containing from 2.9 to 11.9% by weight of iodine as barium iodate have been prepared and subjected to standard leaching tests with very satisfactory results. Incremental rates after 100 days leaching were ∼3 μm/day for specimens containing 9.05% iodine; specimens containing from 5.4 to 11.9% iodine showed surprisingly comparable leach rates. Lower leach rates can be obtained by the addition of butyl stearate or by treating the concrete with waterrepellent agents. The process as envisioned produces no contaminated waste side streams. A product containing 9.05% fission product iodine, of which ∼75% is 129I, will generate ∼3.3 μW/kg of product. The daily iodine product from a 5 × 103 kg/day liquid-metal fast breeder reactor fuel reprocessing plant can be contained in 9.49 × 10−3 m3 (0.335 ft3) of such concrete.