Dan I would imagine this risk assessment will have a discouraging feel about it.
There are too many unknowns to confidently say that the method described will proceed without any challenges.
No sane person would approve of this horrible idea.
I understand that this is outside of your scope but for the sake of discussion my suggestion would be to seal the sodium with wax first. A wax with a
melting point lower than that of sodium.
Say there is up to 2 inches of sodium in a barrel.
Add 2 inches of molten wax to capture any loose material on the sodium surface by spraying it in to wet all the loose material and help prevent it
from floating. . When that's cooled add another 2 inches of clean wax and let that cool.
Now you have a solid layer of around 6 inches. Cut the barrel into 2 pieces just above the wax layer and crush the top piece as flat as possible, you
should be able to get it thinner than 2 inches.
That would come to a total of less than 8 inches per barrel and no fires.
This would eliminate the possibility of barrels splitting at the sodium during crushing.
Questions are, could molten wax trigger any reactions?
How much potentially reactive material is stuck to the walls of the barrels?
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