Ensa collaborates again with SANDIA and PNNL (USA ) and BAM (Germany) laboratories

Maliaño, December 3, 2018 – Equipos Nucleares S.A., S.M.E has reached a new agreement with the American research laboratories of SANDIA and PNNL – with whom already collaborated in a project to measure vibrations during the transport of its ENUN 32P cask in 2017 – by which it will make available to SANDIA the 1/3 scale model of the cask, so that a series of new tests can be carried out in the facilities of the BAM research Centre, in Berlin . Ensa’s technicians will support SANDIA, PNNL and BAM through the tests that will be carried out in this Centre.

The foreseen tests are framed in the verification of the behaviour of the cask and the spent fuel  for compliance with the safety requirements indicated in the Normal Conditions of Transport, which are required in the licensing processes of casks for the Transport mode, according to the current IAEA regulations .

As indicated above, the scale model to be used was built in Ensa for the tests performed under Normal Transport Conditions and Hypothetical Accident Conditions, carried out at the SANDIA facilities , to validate the design of the ENUN 32P cask and the impact limiters of all the casks of the ENUN family, checking the accelerations suffered by the cask, while in this new project the accelerations suffered by the fuel will be checked in greater detail.

Once the tests are completed, all the equipment will return to Ensa while SANDIA and PNNL will be in charge of post-processing and analysing the results obtained. This new collaboration confirms the preparation of Ensa’s technological equipment and its positioning in the research of more advanced products.