US Patent 11289230 Hazardous material canister systems and methods

Techniques for inspecting a weld of a nuclear waste canister include positioning a gamma ray image detector near a nuclear waste canister that encloses nuclear waste. The nuclear waste canister includes a housing that includes a volume in which the waste is enclosed and a top connected to the housing with at least one weld to seal the nuclear waste in the nuclear waste canister. The techniques further include receiving, at the gamma ray image detector, gamma rays from the nuclear waste that travel through one or more voids in the weld; generating an image of the received gamma rays with the gamma ray image detector; and based on the generated image, determining an integrity of the at least one weld.