Design and Certification of a Plutonium Air Transportation Package

Sandia researchers have developed a large plutonium air transportation (LPAT) package that utilizes HPC resources and test facilities. This package is capable of transporting hazardous plutonium materials over the road or by air and was designed to satisfy the plutonium air transport safety criteria specified by U.S. regulations. These regulations stipulate that a hazardous materials transportation package must maintain containment of its hazardous contents, provide sufficient shielding against radiation leakage from the package, and prevent the package contents from going critical during an accident. The regulations define a series of hypothetical accident condition (HAC) tests for which the package must be designed. These tests are intended to bind realistic accident scenarios.