Bulging Drums Options for Mitigation 1998 Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)

This is from an award winning video titled "Bulging Drums - What Every Responder Should Know" produced by the Los Alamos National Laboratory to help educate waste workers, hazardous materials teams, fire fighters, and others on hazardous materials teams who often have little or no training on how to respond or approach bulging drum incidents. Since 1992, there have been more than 100 occurrences in DOE involving incompatible chemical mixing and pressurization of drums where drums became pressurized to unknown levels. Failure of a pressurized drum can cause a rapid release of pressure, possibly ejecting the drum top or bottom and releasing drum contents, which could result in personnel injury and environmental contamination. Currently, there is no quick, inexpensive, and reliable method for determining pressures inside drums. In an attempt to develop training criteria and a device for determining internal pressures in drums, research has been conducted at Los Alamos National Laboratory to explore the effect of pressure on new closed- and open-head metal and plastic drums and metal overpacks. Deformation of a drum indicates the drum has been subjected to internal pressure, not that it is under pressure at the time of inspection. The design of these containers makes them capable of violent rupture, and caution should be taken in approaching deformed drums. This 1998 video "Bulging Drums - What Every Responder Should Know" was produced by the Los Alamos National Laboratory and won a 1998 Aegis Award for writing and directing. The video demonstrates Laboratory-developed technology for releasing abnormal pressure from storage drums. Copies of the video may be obtained by contacting Los Alamos National Laboratory. For details of the research on bulging drums, read the Lesson's Learned article, Bulging Drum Video and Research Data, available at:
http://hss.energy.gov/sesa/analysis/ll/lldb/detail.CFM?Lessons__IdentifierInt... .

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