How does one test the strength of a nuclear waste shipping container, exactly? It’s simple: crash a rocket truck into a wall at 84 miles per hour. That or drive a train into it.
At least, that’s how the Department of Energy did it back in ‘77 and ‘78, as this test video turned up by BangShift notes:
The DOE also held the container over a pool of burning jet fuel to test heat resistance, which the container soundly survived.
DISCUSSION
I'm not gonna pretend to know what engineers were thinking, but at some point, the answer to "How do we get a truck to go 84mph?" was presented as "Simple, we'll just strap a rocket to the back."