Nuclear power has two very big problems which consist of the disposal of nuclear waste and the possibility of nuclear accidents. Both of these problems are connected by the issue of transportation. Spent nuclear fuel rods need to be laid to rest underground in a remote location for the sake of safety. However, first they must be transferred from the nuclear power plants to the repository.
In the United Kingdom, containers of spent nuclear fuel are called nuclear flasks. They are transported by the same rail network that is used by millions of people every day. There is great concern that at some point, a nuclear flask could be involved in a train crash. In order to gain some insight into the repercussions of such an event, the British government decided to crash a locomotive into a nuclear flask at full speed.
These nuclear flasks are huge and forged from steel. Each weigh over fifty tons and has solid steel walls more than a foot thick. The huge lids are also forged steel and they are tied down with sixteen massive bolts that able to withstand a load of one hundred and fifty tons each.
Concerned about the integrity of the nuclear flasks, the government decided to drop a new flask from a height of thirty feet. Instead of spent nuclear fuel rods, the flask was filled with steel replicas immersed in water. The results of the tests were reassuring. Even when the flask was dropped directly onto its weakest point, the only result was that a tiny amount of water that leaked out which was too small to be of any danger.
A year later in 1984, the British refilled the original test flask with more than a ton of water and two hundred fake fuel rods made of steel. They went to a test rail track in Leicestershire and mounted the flask onto one of the rail cars constructed to carry them. Then the rail car and the flask were tipped onto their side directly on the track. They selected a Type 46 diesel-electric locomotive that weighted one hundred and forty tons for the test. Three passenger cars were added to the locomotive to increase the mass of the impact.
The train and flask were covered with scientific instruments. The researchers pressurized the flask to one hundred pounds per square inch so they could measure any loss after the impact. Next, they placed thirty-two different cameras around the crash site. The unmanned train was placed on the rail spur about three quarters of a mile away from the flask. Above it all was a helicopter to chase the train to the crash site. The empty train accelerated to a speed of one hundred miles per hour before it hit the flask at full speed.
The train hit the flask with enormous force. The locomotive was completely destroyed when the train derailed. The fifty-ton nuclear flask was tossed aside like a paperweight. In the aftermath, pressure tests showed that only 0.29-PSI has been released from the flask. The test was a smashing success!
Even with the evidence of the integrity of the nuclear flasks, there are still serious concerns about the transportation of nuclear waste. Critics of the practice point out that modern trains which can reach speeds of up to one hundred and seventy miles per hour in the U.K. would do significantly more damage to a full nuclear flask if an impact or derailment happened. There are also worries about the radiation that might be escaping the nuclear flasks as they are passing by passenger platforms. The British government states that it is not enough radiation be any threat to public health. Unfortunately, governments are not always completely honest with their citizens about dangers of nuclear accidents.