Stress Corrosion Cracking of the Drip Shield, The Waste Package Outer Barrier and the Stainless Steel Structural Material

Abstract

One of the potential failure modes of the drip shield (DS), the waste package (WP) outer barrier, and the stainless structural material is the initiation and propagation of stress corrosion cracking (SCC) induced by the WP environment and various types of stresses that can develop in the DSs or the WPs. For the current design of the DS and WP, however, the DS will be excluded from the SCC evaluation because stresses that are relevant to SCC are insignificant in the DS. The major sources of stresses in the DS are loadings due to backfill and earthquakes. These stresses will not induce SCC because the stress caused by backfill is generally compressive stress and the stress caused by earthquakes is temporary in nature. The 316NG stainless steel inner barrier of the WP will also be excluded from the SCC evaluation because the SCC performance assessment will not take credit from the inner barrier. Therefore, the purpose of this document is to provide a detailed description of the process-level models that can be applied to assess the performance of the material (i.e., Alloy 22) used for the WP outer barrier subjected to the effects of SCC. As already mentioned in the development plan for the WP PMR (CRWMS M and O 1999e), this Analyses and Models Report (AMR) is to serve as a feed to the Waste Package Degradation (WPD) Total System Performance Assessment (TSPA) and Process Model Report (PMR).