Evaluation of the Impact Condition for a High Capacity Spent Nuclear Fuel System

Evaluations are performed for the structural component of a fuel basket in a sealed container which is used for maintaining the configuration of spent nuclear fuel during storage. Spent fuel assemblies are placed into a basket structure which is comprised of separate tubes whose positions are maintained by a series of pins and sockets and an exterior frame work of stiffeners. The canister is placed in a vertical storage cask. The controlling condition is associated with lateral impact of the tip over of the storage cask which results in deceleration being applied normal to the axis of the basket and spent fuel. It is necessary to investigate the potential geometric instability of the array of tubes as well as the potential for a pin-socket component to fail in shear. The angular orientation of the basket affects the development of potential instabilities as well as the level of shear developed in the basket tubes at the pin- socket. In this paper the impact analyses for a system to store 87 BWR fuel assemblies are presented.