Patent Number: 044477295
Section: summary

The invention involves a cylindrical container for the transportation of irradiated reactor elements. Transport containers for radioactive materials must be designed so that the leakage of radioactive substances is safely avoided even in an extremely serious accident. Among such accidents in this sense are: The free fall of the container (e.g., from a transporting vehicle) and the shock against a hard, unyielding surface Conflagrations PA1 submerging in water. Cases capable of withstanding such accidents, consisting of massive, forged steel cylinders, tightly sealed top and bottom, are known. The heavy steel body stops gamma radiation. As a shield against neutron radiation, the container is provided with an outer water jacket. Lateral cooling ribs serve both as heat radiators and as energy absorbers in the event of a lateral impact against the container. Shock absorbers may be mounted on the ends of the container to act as neutron shields as well as energy abosrbers. In the known containers, a particular defect is the energy absorption against shock. Depending on the angle of the fall and the type of shock, there may be unequal inertial values with local points of very high inertia that may lead to damage to the container. The purpose of the invention is to eliminate these defects and to furnish a transport container whose energy absorption characteristics will be essentially uniform in all directions when the shock occurs. This problem is solved in such fashion that the removable shock absorbers mounted on top and on bottom of the container are in the form of a double shell. In an effective variation of the invention, the shock absorbers are torus-shaped and filled with balso wood in which the fibers of the wood are parallel to the direction of the container's axis.