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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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World Bank, IAEA partner to fund nuclear energy
The World Bank and the International Atomic Energy Agency signed an agreement last week to cooperate on the construction and financing of advanced nuclear projects in developing countries, marking the first partnership since the bank ended its ban on funding for nuclear energy projects.
Niranjan Gudibande, Kannan Iyer
Nuclear Technology | Volume 196 | Number 3 | December 2016 | Pages 674-683
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NT16-40
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Radioactive materials are transported in hollow steel casks filled with lead. The lead in these casks can melt in an accidental fire during transportation leading to an increase in its volume. This plastically deforms the steel shell housing the lead. When the cask subsequently cools after the fire is extinguished, voids will form in the solidified lead. This work deals with the simulation of solidification with void formation in these transportation casks. In these simulations, one has to deal with solid-liquid and void-material interfaces. Solid-liquid movement during solidification is treated using a modified enthalpy method. The void that is formed in the solidified lead is assumed to be a vacuum. Consistent with this assumption, the boundary conditions of zero pressure and zero stress are imposed on the interface. The growth of the void is handled using the volume of fluid method. The methodology is first benchmarked by comparing the simulations with some experimental results available in the literature. Simulations are then performed for solidification in the transportation cask to study the effect of orientation on the void formation. A methodology is then developed to quantify the overall shielding effectiveness of the cask in terms of the total amount of radiation leaked.