The regulations in 10 CFR Part 71 require that radioactive material (RAM) packages must be able to withstand specific fire conditions, given in 10 CFR 71.73, during Hypothetical Accident Conditions (HAC). This requirement is normally satisfied by extensive testing of full scale test specimens under required test conditions. Since fire test planning and execution is expensive and only provides a single snapshot into a package performance, every effort is made to minimize testing and supplement the tests with results from computational thermal models. However, the accuracy of such thermal models depends heavily on the thermal properties of the fire insulating materials, properties that are rarely available at the regulatory fire temperatures. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no test standards exist that could be used to test the insulating materials and derive their thermal properties for the RAM package design. This paper presents a review of the existing industry fire testing standards and proposes testing methods that could serve as a standardized specification for testing fire insulating materials for use in RAM packages.
