Thermal Analysis on the Shipment of Russian Plutonium Fuel

Paper presented at the 12th Symposium on Space Nuclear Power and Propulsion in Albuquerque, NM in January 1995. The Mound 9516 shipping package was designed for the shipment of Plutonium-238 fuel. One of the shipping configurations is the Russian Pu-238 powder can. Computer models using SINDA were created to predict the temperatures of the package under normal conditions of transport (NCT: 38oC ambient temperature), under hypothetical accident conditions (HAC: engulfed in fire for 30 minutes), and inside a standard cargo container. Pressure increases inside the package due to the expansion of the trapped gases and helium gas generation from isotope decay were also analyzed. There is a duplicate copy and also a copy in the ESD Files